


Tempus Fugit

by Serendipity_Cometh



Series: At Least We Didn't Panic [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Amazing Spider-Man (Movies - Webb), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Clint Needs a Hug, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magic, Phil Needs a Hug, Superfamily, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-01-23 18:26:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 41,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1575176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serendipity_Cometh/pseuds/Serendipity_Cometh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One moment Clint's battling New York's latest power-crazed, magic-wielding psychopath, the next he's waking up in the middle of Central Park with one helluva hangover. Which, under normal circumstances, would be crappy enough on it's own. </p><p>The fact that he's managed to jump five months into the future is just the icing on the freakin' cake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

The street looked like a massacre of Dr Doolittle proportions.

The carcasses of enlarged, mutated creatures lay strewn over the hoods of abandoned cars, hooves and paws and wings and claws poking out at odd angles, glass and rubble scattered around the bodies like confetti. A horde of sewer rats (each the size of a fully-grown golden retriever) lay in a smoking pile near the entrance to the subway, fried mid-stampede by a hundred terawatts of electricity courtesy of a certain Asgardian prince.

Said Asgardian prince now appeared to be battling a man-sized squirrel in Starbucks. Which, Clint had to admit, wasn’t something you saw every day.

The stench of burning meat was thick in the air, worsened by the mid-July humidity that had Clint sweating like a man on Death Row beneath his reinforced Hawkeye jacket. What he really, _really_ wanted right now was a nice, long shower and a cold beer. Unfortunately, Merlin here didn’t seem to be running short on wizarding mojo, and unless Clint succeeded in separating the psychopath from his glowing stone of magic-ness sometime soon, they wouldn’t be going anywhere fast. There were a _helluva_ lot of critters nearby.

“Look, Dumbldore,” Clint called from his perch on the side of an overturned bus, quickly notching an arrow on his bowstring as the sorcerer weaved his Voodoo magic and transfigured another pigeon into a mutated, man-eating monstrosity and sent it flapping his way, “that stunt you pulled at the zoo was one thing, but this is getting fucking ridiculous. What exactly are you hoping to achieve here?”

His arrow passed straight through the pigeon’s baseball-sized eye and he ducked to allow the carcass to sail cleanly over his head and join its winged friends on the feather-strewn asphalt below.

 _“Barton, don’t antagonise the target,”_ came a firm voice through his earpiece.

“He started it.”

Clint notched another arrow, releasing it a microsecond later to take down the killer cockroach that had been sneaking up on Steve while the super-soldier battled with a house spider the size of an SUV. Ugh. He really hated insects.

_“Hey, fellas! I heard there was a party?”_

Well, with one exception.

Clint’s gaze flickered away from the sorcerer long enough to take in the familiar blur of red and blue as Spiderman swung past him, shooting a string of web at a dog-sized grasshopper before it could pounce on Black Widow. Natasha seemed momentarily disappointed to have been denied a chance to wrestle with the insect, but her attention was quickly required elsewhere as the Hulk came careening around the end of the street, roaring in fury at the hoard of plate-sized Carrion beetles that were swarming over every inch of his green skin.

 _“Glad you could join us, Spiderman,”_ Steve spoke over the comms, his relief evident. _“Think you could string up some of these bugs for us?”_

_“Thought you’d never ask, Cap.”_

The teenager executed a neat flip in mid-air, landing in the middle of the street directly behind Iron Man, where the larger bugs were congregating. In a matter of minutes the ground was a mass of hairy exoskeletons writhing and twitching against the glue-like ribbons of Spiderman’s webbing, several of them sporting large, smoking holes courtesy of Stark’s repulsors.

“No!” the sorcerer yelled, the asphalt beneath his feet cracking as the stone in his hand pulsed. “You will _yield!_ The very heart of this wretched planet beats at _my_ command; I will not-”

Clint’s arrow lodged itself in the man’s throat and he choked mid-tirade. The sallow-skinned fellow crashed to his knees, eyes wide in horror and fear, blood bubbling at his lips as he scrabbled to press the glowing stone against his breastbone. Clearly whatever Voodoo mojo he was playing with was keeping him alive, because a pointy shaft buried that deep in a man’s jugular would usually render them dead in a matter of seconds.

Notching another arrow, Clint took aim, poised to release.

“Call it, Coulson.”

 _“Take the shot, Hawkeye,”_ Phil replied without missing a beat, his voice grim but unwavering. _“This has gone on long enough.”_

“Copy that.”

He released the bowstring, and several things happened at once. Merlin-Gandalf-Dumbledore guy raised his glowing amber stone in front of him, palm-outwards, like a magical mockery of Tony’s repulsor designs, orange-yellow light growing from it in a rapidly expanding orb that encompassed the sorcerer’s crumpled form in the blink of an eye.

Clint’s arrow struck the heart of the orb where the light of the stone pulsed brightest, shattering on impact.

And then the world exploded right along with it.

 

 

 

 

**o~O~o**

 

 

 

 

“Sir? I need you to open your eyes for me.”

Clint groaned, curling into a tighter ball and trying to smother his pounding head in his arms. God, he felt _awful_. And cold. Fucking hell, he was _freezing._

“It really ain’t safe to be out here in fancy dress at this hour, son.” A meaty hand shook him by the shoulder roughly. “Especially if you’ve had a little too much to drink. Good party, huh?”

_“Hey fellas! I heard there was a party?”_

Jolting awake with a sharp inhale, Clint lurched upright, limbs weak and uncoordinated as he scrambled back from the broad-shouldered figure looming over him. The middle-aged NYPD officer held one hand up in a calming gesture, the other moving down to rest on his belt near his sidearm.

“Easy there, pal. Take a minute to get your bearings.” He reached for the flashlight that was resting on the grass a couple of feet away from them. “Can you tell me your name?”

“What?” Clint replied, intelligently. His head was still throbbing something awful, and there was a bone-deep ache in his limbs that wasn’t entirely dissimilar to that one time he’d come down with a bad case of the flu during an undercover op in Milan.

“I’m Nick Bailey,” the officer prompted. “I’m with the New York Police Department. I’d like to help you get home out of the cold, alright, buddy?”

“Cold,” he echoed groggily, because that was the only part of his current situation that he could level with. “It’s cold. Why’s it cold?”

The older man laughed, clipping the flashlight onto his belt and shifting in his crouch to settle his weight more evenly, his ready stance slipping to something more casual (as a fellow fighter, Clint could recognise the signs of a man standing down after realising that his opposition wasn’t a threat – inaccurate, of course, but appreciated nonetheless).

“You must’ve been on the hard stuff tonight, son,” Nick commiserated. “A good night’s sleep and some Gatorade’ll fix you right up, although the hangover’s going to suck somethin’ awful in the morning. Look, is there somebody you could call to come pick you up?”

Clint nodded, then regretted it immediately when his brain threatened to explode inside his skull. He pressed a shaking hand against his forehead, fingers tugging at his fringe. “My…my team.”

“Your team, huh?” Nick’s gaze slid over to the right a little. “Your archery team?”

Turning his head sharply, Clint bore the consequential dagger-like twinge between his eyes without complaint, reaching for his bow and gripping the upper limb tightly, finding a modicum of comfort in the familiarity of its weight and texture.

“Yeah,” he agreed vaguely. “They don’t live far from here.”

After a beat, he realised he was being an idiot and fumbled in his pocket for his Starkphone. The press of a button and he’d have somebody here to pick him up in one of Tony’s ridiculously flashy sports cars. Hell, he’d even lower himself to ride shotgun with Peter (even though the kid drove like an overly cautious grandma) if it meant getting the hell out of this frigid weather.

Luck, however, didn’t seem to be on his side today. Despite the fact that he’d left the Tower with his phone fully charged (and despite this particular model having a six-day battery life), the touchscreen remained dark and lifeless. Fucking technology.

“Phone’s dead too, huh?” Nick sympathised, patting his shoulder. “Never you mind, son. There’s plenty of payphones out on the main road. Think you can remember your friend’s number?”

At Clint’s slow nod, he smiled, dusting off his pants as he stood, the beam from his flashlight blinding Clint momentarily. The archer realised with an ache of regret in his chest that he’d managed to misplace his Hawkeye shades at some point. That was probably the least of his problems, but still, he’d grown attached to them.

“Tell you what,” Nick offered, reaching down to give him a hand up. “I’m stationed just off 52nd street, if you want to sit someplace warm until your buddy shows up? Looks like you could use a cup of coffee.”

“Thanks,” Clint mumbled, because even with a migraine from hell he appreciated not getting tossed in the drunk tank. To be fair, he wasn’t drunk, so that probably helped. He accepted the man’s helping hand, although it took two (horrible, painful) attempts before he actually managed to stand up. “Don’t suppose you could tell me where I am?”

“Catching hypothermia in the middle of Central Park,” Nick told him blithely, keeping a steadying hand on his elbow as they began to make their way down the gently sloping embankment towards the nearby path. Clint recognised the shadowy statue opposite them – he and Steve frequented this route when they went running together – but that didn’t explain how the hell he’d ended up here when he’d been fighting a demented wizard on the opposite side of the park only five minutes ago.

“You’re lucky I found you,” the officer continued. “It’s supposed to drop another ten degrees by midnight. My partner and I don’t usually patrol this route at all, but someone radioed in a 911 call to say that there’d been an explosion somewhere near here. Probably just a prank caller, Lord knows we get plenty of those.” He lifted his arm in a wave, and Clint had to suppress the automatic urge to notch an arrow on his bowstring at the sudden movement. “Mike! Didn’t find any fireworks, but I picked up a stray.”

A younger, olive-skinned officer jogged over to them, arching an eyebrow with an amused grin as he took in Clint’s appearance at a glance. “Little late for Halloween, isn’t it, sir? Although gold star for accuracy. You look just like him.”

If Clint had been feeling his usual, confident self without the confusion of being thrown from one place to another in the blink of an eye, he would’ve flashed his Avengers ID at them and offered to sign their notepads. As it was, all he wanted to do was get his tired, aching ass back to the Avengers Tower and figure out what the hell was going on.

“Yeah, well,” he gave a casual shrug, trying not to appear as though the whole world was still spinning, or that there was a 95% chance he was about to upchuck all over their shoes. “Aspiring archer, y’know how it is. Who else was I supposed to go as?”

“You seem to have sobered up pretty quick,” Nick remarked, patting him on the shoulder. “Good metabolism, huh?”

“Mm,” Clint agreed, reaching up to tap at his earpiece and wondering if the comm-line would still be linked up to Jarvis’ mainframe. It remained disappointingly silent, however.

The walk back to the officers’ patrol vehicle seemed to take forever, and Clint felt shaky and sick to his stomach by the time they reached the road. He’d intended to take Nick up on his offer and hitch a lift to Park Avenue on the way to 52nd so that he could walk the rest of the way back to the Tower. But he was seriously beginning to doubt his ability to maintain control of his limbs in his present condition. He had two hundred dollars _and_ one of Stark’s Gold cards sitting snugly on the inside pocket of his jacket (for emergencies, because one never knew when one might end up stranded in the middle of nowhere without transport). Fuck it. He was getting a cab.

“Y’know what, I think I’ve wasted enough of your time already,” he spoke, leaning back against the base of the streetlamp for support. “I’m sure you gentlemen are kept pretty busy this time of night.” Whatever time of night it currently was – Clint honestly had no idea, his watch still said it was one o’clock in the afternoon. “I’ll just order a cab.”

It took a great deal of persuading before he managed to convince the officers that he’d be just fine on his own, thank you, and _no_ , he really didn’t need to wait for his friend at the station. In the end Nick phoned the cab company for him and waited with Clint on the sidewalk until the vehicle pulled up, helping him to tumble inside (completely without grace – his limbs were being particularly uncooperative) and murmuring a few low words to the cab driver before raising his hand in a parting wave and climbing back into his patrol car as the cab pulled away from the curb.

“Where to, buddy?” the driver asked after a beat. “The officer said you mentioned Park Avenue? I’m gonna need somethin’ a little more specific than that.”

Clint rubbed at his forehead, willing himself not to throw up as the car turned a sharp corner. It felt like a losing battle. He groaned, slumping against the passenger door, clutching onto the handle for dear life.

“He also said I might need to take you to the hospital,” the driver tacked on cautiously.

Right. So that’s why the officer had been so attentive. Maybe Clint looked as sick as he felt.

Pushing himself a little more upright, he took a deep, steadying breath and shook his head. “No, m’okay. Just had a rough night. An’ it’s 200 Park Avenue. Big tower, can’t miss it.”

The driver snorted, then paused, and when Clint failed to provide an alternative address, he glanced back at the archer in the rear-view mirror. “The Avengers Tower? Buddy, if you’re looking for a hotel to sleep off that hangover, Iron Man’s pad ain’t the place to go.”

Jesus Christ. He’d figured even an idiot would put two and two together; he was wearing a frickin’ uniform, after all. Sure, Hawkeye and Widow tended to be the lesser-known members of the team, preferring to keep out of the public eye so that it wouldn’t impede their work as field agents if (or when, rather) Nick requested Strike Team Delta for a specific intelligence op. But even so, they’d still brought out a Hawkeye action figure last month. And he’d officially put plastic bows and arrows back on the toy shelves, decked out in purple and black and sporting the snazzy Avengers ‘A’ on the side. He was almost-sort-of famous. But clearly this guy lived in a cave.

“Look, could you just take me there and stop asking questions?” he ground out, unzipping the top of his jacket and feeling for the hidden inner pocket where he stash of twenty dollar bills was stored safely away. Grabbing a few, he waved them in the cabbie’s general direction. “I’ll pay you triple if you put a sock in it.”

The man’s eyes flickered to the paper bills briefly, before refocusing on the road. “Done.”

The rest of the short journey passed in blissful silence, and soon enough the vehicle was pulling up at the foot of the courtyard in front of Avenger’s Tower. Clint pushed the money towards the driver with a mumbled _‘keep the change’_ , fumbling with the handle on the door until it relented and swung open, almost sending him headfirst to kiss the concrete. Righting himself carefully, he gritted his teeth against the ache of worn muscles and made his way up to the fancy-pants entrance, taking his Avengers ID card from his side-pocket and swiping it against the access port.

_“Facial recognition required. Please remain stationary while the scan is in progress.”_

“Huh.” Well, that was new. Then again, Clint had never stumbled home at gone-midnight before without someone else on the team to let him in. And in hindsight, he hadn’t actually used the door on the ground floor in _weeks_. The Quinjet launched from the roof and the underground carpark had an elevator that bypassed the main foyer.

“Jarvis, c’mon man,” he complained, bracing a hand against the door when the world tilted on its axis again. “It’s me, you know it’s me.”

 _“Indeed,”_ the AI agreed after a beat, and there was a strange note to the computer’s voice that Clint couldn’t quite place. _“Welcome home, Agent Barton. Are you well?”_

“I’ve been better,” Clint admitted, staggering inside gratefully when the doors slid open.

The two security guards behind the reception desk both stood to their feet as he stumbled past, both looking a little stunned, and the archer shot them a sloppy salute as he made a beeline for the private elevator, swiping his card in the access port beside the control pad. The glare of the overhead elevator lights was painfully harsh, and he covered his eyes with a grunt.

“Jarvis, you mind dimming those down a little?”

 _“Of course, sir.”_ Another pause, then, _“The Avengers have been informed of your return.”_

“Thanks, J.” Clint scrubbed a hand through his hair, leaning against the wall of the elevator car as it ascended rapidly. “Take me to whichever floor they’re on, yeah?”

_“Regretfully, Agent Barton, the majority of the team are currently elsewhere dealing with a critical situation.”_

“Damn.” The archer tipped his head back and closed his eyes, taking a steadying breath. “Okay. Is _anyone_ home?”

_“Peter is in the workshop, sir.”_

“Awesome. Take me there, would you?”

Even if the kid wouldn’t be able to shed as much light on the mystery of his situation as perhaps Bruce or Tony could, any information would be welcome right now. The pain in his head was slowly easing, his mind clearing, and what he wanted more than anything was to know _what_ exactly had happened after his arrow had struck Merlin’s magical stone and everything had exploded into light. He really hoped they’d killed the bastard. He _so_ wasn’t up for fighting mutated animals right now.

The elevator slowed to a halt and the doors slid open again, revealing Tony’s expansive workshop in all its (surprisingly uncluttered) glory. The lights were dimmed, but a few holograms still floated around above various workstations, mechanical designs or unfamiliar atomic structures suspended in mid-air and glowing the same aqua-blue as Tony’s arc reactor. And there, on the far side of the ‘shop, slumped sideways on one of the plush couches with a cushion tucked under his head and a throw blanket tugged up to his shoulders in a way that suggested somebody else had put it there, was Peter.

Clint felt bad for waking the kid, but he needed answers. And probably a couple of Aspirin. Perching carefully on the edge of the coffee table, he leaned forwards to nudge the teenager’s shoulder.

“Peter? C’mon, kid, rise and shine.”

The younger man’s reaction was entirely predictable at first. A low, grumbling protest, a smooth brow creasing as the teenager stirred from sleep, eyes opening to narrow slits to peer sleepily at Clint in the semi-darkness of the room.

And that’s where ‘normality’ ended.

Peter’s eyes snapped open comically wide and he shot upright, scrambling backwards to the opposite end of the couch, his blanket tangled around him.

“What?” he demanded in a tremulous voice, breathing heavily. “Jarvis, _what?”_

 _“Readings indicate that he is indeed Agent Barton,”_ Jarvis spoke gently, and Clint hadn’t known the AI to be capable of such tenderness in the past. _“The Avengers have been informed, Peter. Please remain calm.”_

Clint, feeling about two miles behind the conversation, raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Hey, hey, whoa. Of course it’s me. Who else would it be?”

Peter looked about ten seconds from passing out, and the archer moved closer to perch on the couch, concern creasing his own brow when the teenager flinched away from him.

“Buddy, c’mon,” he soothed, raising his hands again, palm-outwards. “It’s me. I don’t know what the hell’s happening or why I just woke up in the middle of Central Park, but I promise you, I’m still the same guy who kicked your ass at Mario Kart last night.”

“Oh my god,” Peter breathed, and the archer was alarmed at the sheen of tears he saw brimming in the teenager’s eyes.

“Peter, what-?”

His question was cut off when the younger man all but threw himself at Clint, one wiry arm wrapping tightly around his shoulders as the teenager crushed him in a painfully tight hug. Clint’s own arms came up automatically, one wrapping securely around the slighter man’s lower back while he rubbed slow circles between Peter’s shoulder blades with his other hand. He was confused as fuck, but that wasn’t going to stop him from giving the kid a goddamn hug if that’s what he needed. Truth be told, if the situation was bad enough to warrant genuine tears in the teenager’s eyes, he deserved all the hugs Clint could give him.

“I don’t understand,” Peter spoke into his shoulder, and there was a wet, tremulous quality to his voice that meant he was crying. A painful lump lodged itself in Clint’s throat, a sympathetic echo of the teenager’s grief, even though he still had no idea what the fuck was going on.

“That makes two of us,” Clint quipped, hoping that humour would bolster the kid’s spirits a little. But Peter only clutched at him tighter. The archer’s concern was quickly growing to match his confusion. “Peter. Kid, listen to me - I need to know what happened after the fight. My arrow hit Gandalf’s super-stone, then what?”

“You both vanished,” Peter spoke, still clinging to him like an octopus. “There was this…this huge flash of light which drained all the power from a ten-block radius, and almost shut down Tony’s arc reactor. And you were just _gone_. We looked _everywhere,_ man, for _months._ But we never-”

“Wait, wait,” Clint pushed Peter back to hold him by the shoulders at arm’s length, his heart constricting painfully in his chest, hoping (praying) that he’d heard the kid wrong. “What do you mean ‘months’?”

Peter’s gaze scanned his expression, bloodshot eyes widening momentarily before softening into something that made him look far older than he had any right to be.

“The fight on Maddison Avenue, the whole battle with Tarius,” the teenager reached out to touch Clint’s vest again, as though to certify that he was still there, “that was five months ago, Clint. Back in July. It’s…it’ll be Christmas soon.”

No. Nope. Not happening. _Wrong_.

“Clint?” Peter’s hand moved to grip onto his wrist instead, still his right hand, not his left – and it wasn’t until Clint looked at him, _properly_ looked at him, that he saw the sling. Saw the plaster cast covered in marker pen doodles. _It hadn’t been there that morning._

Fuck. Fucking hell.

“Jarvis,” he gritted out, turning away from the teenager to brace his elbows on his knees and hold his head in his hands, because he was half convinced that it would fall off without the additional support. “Jarvis, what’s the date?”

_“It’s December 8 th, 2013, sir.”_

_Well, shit._

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

The short flight from New York was wrought with silent tension.

It wasn’t often that the team allowed their emotions to get the better of them, but it had been so _long_ since the last energy fluctuation, and after three solid months of _nothing_ – hitting dead-ends on all of their previous data leads and losing a few good agents along the way – their optimism had started to flag. So when the SHIELD satellite had detected a sudden energy surge along the eastern border of George Washington National Forest, they’d suited up and taken off in the blink of an eye. They’d done it before – run scrambling after a fading ion trail in the middle of the night; hoping for a miracle, or even just a chance to kill the magical fucker who’d pulled a Houdini on them all and vanished without a trace, taking Clint with him. They’d come home empty-handed more times than Tony could count, but that didn’t mean they were ever going to stop looking. Barton wasn’t dead until they found a body.

Tony still felt a twist of guilt in his gut at their decision to leave Peter back at the Tower without alerting him to their new discovery, but he and Steve had agreed it was for the best. It had been a rough couple of months for the kid, between Electro and Goblin and Rhino; and the last thing the teenager needed was to have his hopes dashed again.

Not that Tony was at all pessimistic about the situation – if anyone was stubborn enough to survive magically hitch-hiking though some kind of inter-dimensional corridor, I was Clint fucking Barton – but they’d chased enough false leads in recent months that he was choosing to remain quietly sceptical about this one. It would make it easier to accept defeat later on when the ion trail inevitably led them to a great big pile of nothing.

“You sure this is the spot?”

Bruce’s fingers tapped deftly on touchscreen of the Quinjet’s inbuilt monitor. “I’ve recalibrated the sensors twice; the energy readings definitely originate from here.” He leaned back in his seat after a moment, dragging a hand down the lower half of his face. “I’m sorry, but that’s as much as I can give you. I don’t have enough data to narrow it down to anything more specific.”

“No, it’s good, it’s awesome.” Tony clapped a hand down the man’s shoulder, mindful of force he put behind it (the Suit could pack one helluva punch). “At least now we know which haystack to start looking in. Any word from Coulson?”

“He still hasn’t been able to contact Dr Strange.” Bruce took off his glasses to rub at his eyes tiredly. “And to be perfectly honest, without Stephen’s insight, we’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of being able to make sense of these readings.”

Tony sighed - a harsh, frustrated exhale through his nose – nodding as he turned away to clunk back up the length of the Quinjet, pausing when he reached the cockpit and leaning against the metal support strut behind Natasha’s chair. Steve turned in the co-pilot’s seat to glance over at him with a brief, grim smile.

“Hey. Any progress?”

“Well, we’re definitely in the right place.” Tony watched as the expansive forest below them loomed ever closer. “But the energy pattern’s too dispersed to get a fixed location on the source. Looks like we’re gonna have to resort to a good, old-fashioned treasure hunt until Strange shows up.”

“We’re almost at the coordinates,” Natasha spoke without looking up from the controls. “There’s a clearing up ahead, I’m taking us down.”

“Bruce, buckle up,” Steve called over his shoulder, reaching for the landing gear controls above his head as he tapped his earpiece with his other hand. “Thor, this is Steve, do you copy? We’re about to land. What’s your status?”

 _“I have yet to encounter our adversary, Captain,”_ the Asgardian replied, his voice sounding tinny as it filtered through the Quinjet’s speakers. _“But I have no doubt that magic is at work here; the air is ripe with it.”_

“Is it the stone?” Tony asked, metal gauntlets chinking as he flexed his fingers, a nervous sort of anticipation building in his gut.  

 _“Aye,”_ Thor confirmed grimly. _“Mjolnir is drawn to it, just as before. But this cursed forest is too dense to examine from above, it would be prudent to continue our search on foot.”_

Tony had never been more grateful for the Asgardian’s magic-sensitive acuities. Technical specifications only gave them so much – if Thor was _sensing_ the sorcerer’s magical mojo, at least it confirmed they were following a legitimate lead. For once.

“Copy that.” Steve glanced back at Tony again. “I’d brace yourself if I were you.”

The landing was surprisingly smooth, considering the collective sense of urgency that permeated the air, although with Widow at the wheel he really shouldn’t have expected anything less. Trudging down the ramp and out into the open, Tony flipped down his faceplate against the bite of the frigid winter wind, frozen grass crunching beneath his boots as he slowly turned in a full circle, scanning the clearing for the same energy specifications they’d been chasing these past five months. Finding only trace amounts, he banished the 3D data-screen from view with a muttered command. He turned back towards his teammates in time to see Thor swoop in to land a few metres away from them, kicking up twigs and frozen leaf debris as he skidded to a halt.

“My friends,” he greeted with uncharacteristic gravity, adjusting his hold on Mjolnir as he strode towards them, cape billowing out behind him. “Be on your guard. I sense the stone is close at hand.”

“Any guesses as to which direction?” Steve asked, leather gloves squeaking as his flexed his grip on his shield.

Thor sighed and shook his head grimly. “Its power is too great. The stone draws its energy from water and earth, and from the richness of life held therein– a forest such as this provides quite a banquet.”

“We should split up, we’ll cover more ground that way,” Bruce suggested, tapping at the screen of his hand-held scanner, a frown creasing his brow. The hood of his thick winter coat was pulled up high to protect him from the biting wind, but it did little to protect his face, his cheeks already tinging pink in the glow of the Quinjet’s floodlights.

Natasha nodded briskly, priming her I.C.E.R. gun. “Agreed. The sooner we take out Tarius, the better.”

Steve glanced between them, ill at ease, and shook his head. “The last thing we want to do is leave ourselves open to attack. We’re stronger fighting as a unit.” He turned to look at Tony. “Iron Man?”

 _“Sir,”_ came Jarvis’ voice through the secure channel in his helmet just as the mechanic was about to answer, _“there is a situation that requires your immediate attention.”_

“Not now, Jarvis.” Tony flipped his faceplate up, taking a step closer to the others. “Cap’s right, guys, we can’t risk breaking ranks against this guy. If Tarius works his Voodoo crap on us again, we’ll have every fucking bug in this forest to contend with. We’ve got a better chance of beating him if we stick together.”

 _“Sir, I’m afraid this cannot wait,”_ Jarvis insisted, his voice now passing through Tony’s earpiece over the open Avenger’s channel. _“I’m programmed to contact you by any means necessary in the event of a Priority Red situation at the Avengers Tower.”_

“At the tower?” Steve echoed, glancing across at Tony sharply as he raised two fingers two his own earpiece, his concern evident even with the cowl masking half his face. “Jarvis, talk to me. What’s happened? Is Peter alright?”

 _“Peter remains unharmed,”_ the AI assured them calmly. _“However, I suspect that Agent Barton may require medical assistance.”_

There was a short beat of silence, Tony’s breath freezing halfway in his chest as the roaring cacophony of his everyday passing thoughts came screeching to a sudden halt. He shot a wide-eyed look towards Steve, who seemed equally as taken aback, and at the realisation that he _hadn’t_ just imagined the words, everything sped back up again.

Natasha swore hoarsely and turned on her heel to sprint back up the ramp and into the Quinjet, Bruce hot on her heels. Still reeling from the reality bitch-slap that he’d just been dealt, Tony made as though to follow, but Steve’s hand caught him by one of his gauntlets before he could turn away.

The captain’s shoulders were tense, but when he spoke his voice was low and calm, a firm reminder that this was a man who’d led troops into war and dealt with situations far shittier than this.

“Take the armour back to New York,” Steve murmured, quietly enough that the others wouldn’t hear. “You’ll get there in half the time.” He glanced towards the ramp, his face pinched. “Tarius is still a threat, I can’t justify all of us abandoning the mission like this, however much I want to. Not when there are towns nearby that might pay the price if he takes control of the wildlife like he did before.”

It was a tough call to make, and Tony was glad he wasn’t the one carrying that weight on his shoulders, although he felt pulled two ways at the thought of leaving his team behind to fight a power-crazed sorcerer without backup.

“Don’t be long,” he requested, aiming for light-hearted and casual but falling depressingly short of the mark

“We’ll stay behind until SHIELD arrives,” Steve told him quietly. “Or until we apprehend Tarius – whichever comes first. And then we’ll be right behind you.”

“Copy that.” Tony took several paces back to remove Steve from the blast radius of his repulsors, holding the man’s gaze as he did so. “Keep me updated. I’ll let you know what’s happening as soon as I’ve made contact with Peter.”

Steve nodded briskly. “Be careful.”

Face plate clanking down, Tony took off into the night’s sky, his internal navigation system quickly calculating a clear flight path back to New York, weather patterns and wind speeds flitting across his helmet’s viewscreen in a continuous scroll.

“Jarvis, consider this an emergency flight plan,” he instructed briskly, ascending to a higher altitude. “Skip out the scenic route, just get me home. And divert power to the aft repulsors, I need to cut that ETA in half.”

_“Sir, the suit cannot withstand that level of strain,” Jarvis cautioned. “If you maintain your current speed, you run the risk of overloading the flight systems.”_

“Hey, you know me, nothing like a bit of danger to liven up the day.” Tony watched as the data on his screen changed to account for the altered flight plan. “Atta boy, Jarvis. Patch me through to the tower, I need to talk to Clint. Is he conscious? He’s still breathing, right? Tell me he’s breathing.”

_“His respiratory function appears undamaged, sir.”_

“Thank fuck for that. Open a channel, would you?”

There was a brief pause. _“Unfortunately, there seems to be a malfunction in the Tower’s communication grid. Internal sensors indicate the cause to be a power fluctuation in-in-India. Indigo. Indigenous.”_

“Jarvis?” Tony’s tone was sharp, alarmed.

_“The e-en-energy surge is beginning to affect- beginning to affect- beginning to affect pr-primary systems.”_

The engineer swore as the hyperlink symbol between the suit and the Avengers Tower began to glitch in the top right-hand corner of his helmet’s screen. “Jarvis, initiate emergency protocol Alpha-six. Transfer and reboot, shut down all non-essential systems and lock out external data feeds.”

There was another pause, longer this time, and Tony didn’t dare to breathe in case he missed something.

 _“Emergency protocol complete, sir,”_ Jarvis spoke, his voice coming through clear again and devoid of static. _“I’ve transferred my matrix to the Alcove. It appears to be undamaged.”_

“Jesus Christ,” Tony breathed, taking a few deep breaths as he carefully readjusted his flight trajectory to compensate for his unintentional, panic-induced drop in altitude. “Okay. Okay, I’m gonna need details, give me details. What’s the source of the power fluctuation?”

_“Unknown. A full sensor sweep of the Tower is currently in progress. Security personnel have been informed.”_

Tony ground his teeth together, since clenching his hands into fists wasn’t an option mid-flight. “Jarvis,” he managed, his voice tight, “I don’t care if you have to burn out every relay in this goddamn suit, just get me _home_ , you understand me?”

_“Yes, sir.”_

 

 

 

**_o~O~o_ **

“Clint?”

“I’m fine. I’m fine, just….just gimme a minute here okay, kid?”

Squeezing his eyes tight shut, Clint fisted his hair in both hands hands, tugging at it hard enough to make his scalp ache. Sadly, the pain didn’t serve to jolt him from his current nightmare; all it did was make his headache worse.

Leaning forwards a little to brace his elbows on his knees, he fell back on his combat training – deep breath in, hold for five, exhale, repeat – fighting to clamp down on the overwhelming sense of _holy friggin’ hell, this is bad_ that was swelling up in his chest and wrapping like a vice around his lungs.

“Clint…?” Peter hedged, and there was enough of a nervous edge to it that the archer dropped his hands to glance at him.

The teenager wasn’t looking at him – instead, he was staring up at the dimmed overhead lights, which were flickering on and off sporadically.

“Jarvis, what’s going on?” the kid asked, his countenance growing increasingly more alarmed as all the holographic screens began to fizzle out around them.

_“Sys-sys-system failure. Initiate-, failure. Initiating emergency protocols, -mergency, emergency protocols, protocols. Sys-sytem…”_

Then the lights went out completely, throwing the workshop into darkness. Clint pushed the fog in his brain aside and fumbled with cold, uncoordinated fingers to retrieve his bow from the floor. There was movement to his left as Peter stood from the couch – Clint tried to snag hold of him before he could stray too far, but his reflexes were crappy and his arm didn’t go the way he wanted it to.

“Peter? Don’t go wondering off. Hey, talk to me, kid.”

“I’m here,” the younger man replied, and a hand touched his right shoulder briefly, the gentle whisper of bare feet padding against the floor as Peter moved past him. “I can’t see much, but I can see more than you. There’s an emergency case on the far side of the room, it’s got flashlights and candles and stuff.”

Clint struggled to push himself to his feet. “Hold up, I’m coming with you.”

“Dude, no, you can barely sit up on your own. Stay put, it’ll only take a minute.”

There was a soft ‘thud’ and a quiet, hissed _“ow, fuck”_ , followed by the sound of something heavy being scraped across the floor. Clint’s grip tightened on his bow, even as he ground the fingers of his other hand against his forehead, trying to knead out the throbbing pain there. The darkness wasn’t doing anything for his fatigue, and even the fear and the panic that was bubbling up inside him didn’t serve to shake off the residual drowsiness that still clung to him like a second skin.

“Aha! Jackpot.” There was a sharp _crack_ , closely followed by a second, and pale blue-tinted light suddenly cut through the darkness of the room. Peter grinned across at him, waving the thick glow-sticks with his uninjured hand. “Now it can be _Panic At The Disco._ ”

The teenager tucked the glow-sticks into his sling and reached down to snag a large, hand-crank powered flashlight from the box before making his way back across the workshop towards the couch. Sitting down gingerly, he crossed his legs and set the flashlight to rest in the concave they created so that he could fish the glow-sticks out of his sling. They were absurdly bright, and Clint couldn’t bear to look at them for more than a moment, his eyes burning and his head pounding in complaint after only a brief glance.

“Only Jarvis has access to the primary systems,” Peter mused aloud, setting the sticks to one side and unlocking the crank on the flashlight so that he could begin winding it up. “There must’ve been a breach, that’s why he cut the power.”

Clint side-eyed him, still wincing. “You’re being unnervingly calm about all this.”

The kid shrugged, still cranking slowly. “Tony built the Alcove a couple of months back; it acts as a secondary matrix if both the primary and backup systems are damaged, or if someone tries to hack into Jarvis’ data banks again.”

“Again?” Clint asked, feeling his stomach drop out. He couldn’t remember that. Which meant it was something he’d missed, something that had happened in the _five freakin’ months_ when he’d apparently ceased to exist.

“Shit. Shit, I’m sorry.” Peter’s expression was part guilt and part worry, and he looked so goddamn _young,_ which was perhaps the most unsettling thing of all. The kid was way too young to be dealing with this shit. “Look, don’t worry about it. Forget I said anything.” He fumbled to lock the crank back in place, turning the flashlight away from them both before switching it on (smart, smart kid – Clint’s retinas were grateful). “It’s fine. We’re fine, right?”

Well, Clint was still ninety percent sure he was about to upchuck all over the floor, but on the whole he was doing okay, all things considered. He dragged a hand down his face, reaching over to pat Peter’s knee.

“Yeah, kid. Yeah, we’re fine.”

He wasn’t panicking. Much. Sure, he’d allowed himself that brief two-minute window to internally freak the fuck out, but he had it under control now. His previous career as a SHIELD agent had been founded on his innate ability to keep his shit together when the rest of the world was crumbling into chaos; he’d gone through hell and back again, once quite literally, over the course of the past twelve years – he’d handled tougher situations than this. Nothing seemed to be bleeding or broken, and there wasn’t an imminent threat that he needed to take care of. He was home. He was _alive._ And as long as he stayed focused on the positives, he’d be able to keep the anxiety at bay for as long as he needed to.

“My cell phone’s dead,” Peter lamented after several minutes of silence, sounding more put-out about that than about their current blackout predicament. “I swear I only charged it this morning.”

“Mm,” Clint grunted, having dropped his bow to cradle his head in his hands again, his eyes closed. “Join the club. I had to get a cop to phone me a cab. Never gonna live that one down.”

He was starting to feel too warm now, after an eon of shivering. His fingers still felt cold against his face, but his skin tingled with a painful heat, like the almost-pins-and-needles of a fresh sunburn. Which made no fucking sense, since it was apparently winter and all.

God, he was _exhausted._ It was only through sheer force of will that he hadn’t fallen asleep right here on the couch. He heard, rather than saw, the overhead lights flicker back on, the thrumming whir of power rebooting the main systems like music to his ears.

“Jarvis?” Peter asked, hopefully.

_“I’m here, Peter. Are you injured?”_

“No, I’m fine, we’re fine,” the teenager replied, his relief audible. “What happened?”

 _“There was an energy surge that temporarily affected all electrical systems in the tower,”_ Jarvis explained. _“I was forced to transfer my matrix to the Alcove to avoid irreparable damage. You’ll be pleased to hear that I have now regained control of the tower’s primary systems, although regrettably the communications grid remains inactive. Agent Barton, Mr Stark is requesting an update on your status.”_

“Alive,” Clint mumbled, still keeping his eyes closed. “Tell him to get his ass back here, stat. I need some fucking answers.”

_“I’ll be delighted to relay the message, Agent Barton.”_

“Wait,” Peter sounded affronted, “you mean he’s not in the tower? Jarvis?”

 _“He’s currently en route, sir,”_ Jarvis replied calmly, _“and will be with you shortly. Please remain calm.”_

Peter muttered to himself, a few choice curses intermingled with unintelligible grumbling that was too low for Clint to make out. Giving up on keep track of the conversation, he let himself drift for a while, limbs heavy, pain blooming in his skull with every inhale. A distant part of his brain was alarmed at just how groggy he felt, but it was difficult to focus on that feeling long enough to grasp hold of it. Thinking hurt too much.

“Clint?” Fingers touched his shoulder, tentatively, before the couch cushions dipped again as Peter sat back down beside him. “I…I made you coffee.”

Clint willed his arms to obey him, and after a lengthy pause he managed to drop his hands and pry his eyes open. Spying the steaming mug in the younger man’s grip, he reached for it like a man starved, cradling the warm ceramic in his hands and inhaling the rich-scented steam deeply.

So apparently they still had coffee in the future. That was good to know.

He took a sip, not caring that it was still too hot and that it burnt his tongue a little. The pain was a welcome distraction at the moment, and the heat was definitely appreciated. Upon reflection, he probably still hadn’t thawed out properly after his catnap in Central Park. Although his skin felt warm, the chill had bitten bone-deep into aching joints…wait…and now he was experiencing acute fatigue, an inability to concentrate?

_Aw, hell._

He’d been hypothermic often enough during his career, he ought to have recognised the symptoms sooner than this. Who could say how long he’d been snoozing out in the middle of that field before the police officer had stumbled across him? _Idiot._ _Fucking idiot._

Something light and soft flopped against his back, and he glanced up from the rim of his mug with a slow blink, lips kicking up at the corner when he saw Dummy’s arm retreating, the bot’s claw rotating from side to side in a slow wave as he whirred, low and curious. Behind him, You and Butterfingers stood on standby with a stress ball and a snack-pack of Oreo cookies.

“Sorry,” Peter murmured, reaching across with his uninjured arm to straighten out the blanket that Dummy had so unceremoniously dumped on top of the archer. “I tried to keep them away earlier while you were…you know, freaking out. And then the power cut, so their systems were automatically switched to standby. But they, uh, they kinda have a protocol thing in place? In case Tony has a bad day. And I, uh, I don’t have the override codes, so...”

“Nah, it’s cool.” Clint took another, larger gulp of his coffee, the heat and the caffeine doing wonders for his foggy head, as Peter fussed to fix the blanket around his shoulders properly. If it was hypothermia, at least the kid was handling it right. If it was a side-effect of that crazy fucker’s magical mojo, then at least he had coffee and a blanket to make the experience marginally better.

“You hungry?” Peter asked, fiddling with the corner of the blanket. “I mean, since you’ve been away for…I guess it’s probably been a while since…” He swore softly. “Sorry. I suck at this.”

“You’re doin’ fine.” Clint turned his head a little to smile at the teenager, something a bit more genuine than his previous attempts, and hunkered down a little further beneath the blanket, grateful for the added insulation. “Thanks, kid.”

The teenager gave a one-shouldered shrug, dropping his hand again to fiddle with the cradle of his sling, his gaze still glued to the archer’s face as though he feared that Clint might suddenly disappear if he dared to blink. Clint didn’t like it. The kid hadn’t looked this unsure around him since Peter had first moved into the Tower last year after the Connors/Lizard incident at Oscorp. It was unsettling to see him like this. 

Actually, on closer inspection, Peter looked about as awful as Clint felt. With the lighting in the workshop still dimmed (Clint’s migraine wasn’t ready to handle anything brighter than 50% illumination at the moment, so thank God Jarvis hadn’t cranked it up), he couldn’t visually assess the kid as much as he would’ve liked, but it was enough to see that the teenager was sporting dark half-circles beneath his eyes that spoke of long, late nights and troubled sleep. Creases seemed to form at the corners of his eyes, too, whenever he moved – the archer had missed it at first, too lost in his own aches and pains, distracted by the shock of it all, but it couldn’t possibly be mistaken for anything else. Peter held himself in a way that Clint was all too familiar with; his posture indicative of bruised or broken ribs which were bothering him enough to impede mobility.

“Jesus.” Clint took another gulp of his coffee and glanced at him up and down. “What the hell happened to you, kid?”

Peter blinked at him, and the flicker of incredulity that graced his features was comforting in its familiarity. “What happened to _me?_ You show up after five months looking like shit and borderline hypothermic, and _I’m_ the one who’s supposed to give an explanation?”

Clint grinned at him, although it felt forced at best. “I asked first.” He snaked a hand out from beneath the blanket to rap a knuckle lightly against the plaster cast that encased the kid’s left arm. “Where’d you get this?”

“Medbay on the helicarrier,” Peter replied, because he was a smartass and apparently some things didn’t change with age.

The archer gave him a _look._ “Pete.”

“Look, I broke it, okay?” He gave another careful one-shouldered shrug. “Considering our line of work, I’m only surprised it didn’t happen sooner. It’s no big deal.”

Except it _was._ Clint wasn’t a renowned scientist, sure, but he wasn’t an idiot either, and he knew his team as well as he knew his compact bow. He knew how quickly Bruce’s blood sugar levels could drop after spending a long period of time as the Other Guy; Clint, Natasha and Steve had been carrying sealed tubes of glucose tablets on the belts of their uniforms for over a year now so that Bruce wouldn’t have to deal with the symptoms of hypoglycaemia post-transformation. Clint knew that Thor wasn’t as indestructible as he had initially led them all to believe; that he grew dizzy and groggy if he didn’t sleep at least once a fortnight, more so if he’d sustained injury during battle. Tasha would literally fight until she dropped if the situation called for it, so pulling her off the field if she was injured had become a vital part of Clint’s tag-teaming strategy – she might swear at him (or worse) afterwards, but at least she’d be alive to do it. The same issue often applied to Steve, too, although he tended to be more gracious in accepting his deteriorating physical state than Natasha ever was. Tony was a self-sacrificing idiot, but then they all knew that.

And Peter? The kid always seemed to be injuring himself on _something_. But his genetic mutation had gifted him with a fucking amazing healing factor, so often the bruises he’d sustained in the morning would be gone by the time he went to bed that night. Which was why the cast was so concerning – the teenager was built as solid as Steve was, in terms of durability against blunt-force trauma. He’d been thrown into buildings from a distance of sixty feet and hobbled away with nothing more serious than a spectacular array of bruises and a couple of lacerations. Clint hadn’t realised that the kid was _capable_ of fracturing a bone properly.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Peter complained, and there was a soft, exasperated note to it that suggested the teenager had probably had his fill of being fussed over by the rest of the team. “It’s just a broken arm.”

“I think we both know it’s a little more serious than that.” Clint turned on the couch a little to face him properly, his brow still creased. “I thought your super-healing thing was supposed to take care of bone fractures in a matter of hours?”

“It does,” Peter muttered, dropping his eyes to the plaster cast and picking at a bit of the inner cotton padding near his thumb. “Usually. But I broke it in a few places, so the docs had to stabilise it to stop the bones from shifting before they could mend.”

“Yikes.” Clint set his coffee aside, reaching for the limb and checking the circulation in Peter’s fingers through force of habit. “You fall off a rooftop or something, Bugboy?”

“No. That’s your job, remember?” Peter retorted, but the joke fell flat when his voice broke on the last word. His Adam’s apple bobbed visibly as he swallowed and averted his gaze again, fingers squeezing around Clint’s. After a long pause, he took a deep, slightly shaky breath. “Sorry. I just…god, I _missed_ this.”

Clint squeezed back, settling his other hand on Peter’s shoulder. “Hey. It’s fine, kid. Nothin’ to be sorry for.”

Peter took another slow, steadying breath and raised his eyes again, and ouch, Clint hadn’t been ready for that level of emotional pain.

“ _Five months_ , Clint,” he reiterated, his voice hushed. “Your shades turned up in Central Park six weeks in, but after that there was _nothing._ I’d started to…..I thought maybe you were…”

 _Dead,_ Clint wanted to supply, but held his tongue. Because he’d been there. He’d given up on colleagues that were MIA much sooner than that. Five months without any solid leads was a long fucking time to hold on to hope.

“I’m not,” he said instead, low and reassuring, squeezing the narrow shoulder gently.

Peter held his gaze, gripping his hand a little tighter. “But where _were_ you, man?”

“I don’t know, Pete.” Clint shook his head tiredly, regretting it immediately when it worsened the pounding in his skull. “That’s what I need to figure out.”

He had to focus on that first – on getting answers. Because if he paused long enough to think about the implications of his absence, about what his friends and colleagues must’ve gone through these past five months, he’d end up having another meltdown. And he’d already used up his allocated two minutes. He definitely couldn’t think about Phil. Not yet. He wasn’t in the right frame of mind to handle that kind of shit. So he pushed the emotional stuff forcefully to one side and determinedly redirected his attention elsewhere.

“Son of a bitch.”

Clint’s gaze snapped towards the door, taking in Tony at a glance. The mechanic was dressed in the skin-tight shirt and fitted pants combo that he wore beneath the Iron Man armour, his breathing shallow and a little erratic like he’d taken the stairs at a sprint rather than using the elevator. His eyes were wide as his gaze met Clint’s, his lips parted a little, and _holy fuck_ the man was actually speechless.

“Barton, you little _shit_.”

_Or not._

“Nice to see you too, Tony,” he drawled with a wry, weary smile, struggling to push himself to his feet (because relief and shock made people do irrational things sometimes, and if Stark was going to take a swing at him, he wanted to be ready).

“Where the _hell_ have you been?” the older man demanded, stalking across the room towards him with grim intent in his stride. Clint braced himself, but all the mechanic did was yank him forwards into an abrupt, un-Tony-like hug. “Five months, Barton – five _fucking_ months.”

“I know,” Clint acknowledged, bringing his arms up to return the embrace after a moment of stunned inertia. “I know, okay? And I’m sorry. Although in my defence, as far as I’m concerned the fight in Maddison Avenue only happened, like, a couple of hours ago.”

Tony pushed him away again, gripping him by the shoulders, and the narrow-eyed assessing look he pinned Clint with was 100% scientist. “Time travel?” the mechanic hazarded, and nodded at his own conclusion before Clint could so much as blink. “Well. That’s new. How was it? _Back To The Future_ -ish? Can I call you McFly?”

“No,” Clint grunted, and patted Tony’s arm once before pulling away to sit back down on the couch again, his head spinning. Well, more like _fall_ back down onto the couch. There wasn’t a lot of grace about it - apparently remaining vertical was too much of a challenge at the moment.

“Clint?” Peter’s hand was on his shoulder again. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothin’, I’m fine,” the archer gritted out between clenched teeth, cradling his head in his hands, elbows braced on his knees. “Just stood up too fast.”

“He was like this before,” Peter told the mechanic. “He kept zoning in and out all the time.”

“Jarvis, redirect power from the secondary systems, get the elevators back online again,” Tony instructed. “Clint? Gonna need you to move, buddy. I promise you can crash into bed in, like, thirty seconds. But I want to get you to the infirmary first.”

Clint wanted to deny the need for medical input, but in all honest his inability to _function_ was starting to concern him and he suspected there was more to it than just a mild case of hypothermia.

“What, did you qualify as a doctor while I was away?” he joked, accepting the arm that Tony hooked beneath his own to lever him back onto his feet.

“Kinda. Human bodies are surprisingly like machines, only messier.” Taking most of the archer’s weight, Tony shot Peter a chiding look when the teenager tried to slide Clint’s other arm over his shoulders to help. “Don’t even think about it, kid. You damage those ribs again and Bruce’ll have both our heads.”

“How’d Bugboy bust his arm, anyway?” Clint asked, taking careful steps as they slowly navigated their way across the workshop. “He was being suspiciously cryptic about the whole thing.”

The mechanic adjusted Clint’s arm around his shoulders a little. “Rhino crushed it.”

Clint arched an eyebrow. “A rhino crushed it?” he echoed. “Don’t tell me Saruman came back to mess with the zoo animals again?”

“Not _a_ rhino,” Peter corrected softly, leaning against the wall of the elevator as they stepped inside, dropping his gaze to study the floor. “ _The_ Rhino.”

Tony glanced at teenager briefly, something in his expression darkening a little at the sudden change in the kid’s demeanour.  Then he sighed and turned his attention back to Clint, elaborating:

“Aleksei Sytsevich. Psychotic ex-Mafia thug who got hand-picked by some of Osborn’s more shady associates to be pumped full of super-serum. They manufactured this impenetrable biological armour, stuck a horn on in head, and set him loose on the city as _The Rhino_.” Tony’s gaze flickered across to Peter again, his expression troubled. “Fucker had it in for Pete. Whether he was under orders or it was a personal vendetta, God knows. SHIELD doesn’t want to wake him up long enough to find out.”

Clint straightened a little at that. “You mean he’s still _alive?”_

“Unfortunately,” Tony confirmed. “It wasn’t my call, don’t look at me like that. I would’ve been more than happy to let the Hulk grind him into dust, but SHIELD got there before we did; packed him up and shipped him off for permanent storage. He’s under heavy sedation in The Fridge.”

The archer found temporary satisfaction in entertaining the thought of shooting an arrow or two through the bastard’s eye. He’d be willing to bet fifty bucks that Tasha would be on board with the idea. Usually he considered The Fridge to be penance enough for a man’s crimes, but one look at the way Peter’s posture had hunched at the mention of the man’s name, and the mental image of the kid fighting the bastard solo and getting the shit kicked out of him before backup arrived…fuck. On reflection, maybe an arrow through the eye would be too merciful.

The lights in the elevator began to flicker suddenly. The car slowed to a halt, and Clint made an aborted grab for his bow only to remember that he’d left it next to the coffee table in the workshop. _Shit._

Tony glanced up sharply. “Jarvis?”

 _“A temporary power surge in the elevator cotrols,”_ the computer replied. _“I’m attempting to compensate. Please stand by.”_

“Dammit, Stark, what’s up with your tech today?” Clint complained, but in a tone that lacked any real heat. “Don’t make ‘em like you used to, huh?”

“Electrical fault,” Tony dismissed, and grinned when the elevator whirred back to life again. “See? Nothing to worry about. And I mean that, Legolas. Quit worrying.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the archer grumbled. “Easy for you to say.

“No, like, I _really_ need you to not worry for a little bit, okay?”

“Okay,” Clint agreed suspiciously, elongating the ‘a’ as he side-eyed the mechanic.

“Tony?” Peter pried, mirroring Clint’s confusion. “What’s going on?”

The mechanic shrugged and sent the kid another sixty-watt smile that was painfully fake. “Don’t know, just a hunch. Jarvis, I’m gonna need a full spectrum diagnostic, yeah? Let me know when it’s done.”

The doors slid open to reveal the infirmary – a vast, expansive room filled to the brim with high-tech medical equipment, with a screened section to the far left in case they ever had to quarantine a team member. Clint was relieved to see that it hadn’t changed much in five months. There were a couple of machines that Clint didn’t recognise, and the storage cabinets had been moved from one side of the floor to the other, but on the whole it had stayed the same. Thank fuck.

Tony nudged him towards the nearest bed. “Sit down before you fall down, Katniss.”

“I’m fine,” Clint grunted, a token protest, even as he all but face-planted onto the hard, medical-grade mattress. Although it might as well have been made of marshmallows – given how exhausted he was, the only thing his body cared about was that it was a horizontal surface and it wasn’t _cold._

Tony might’ve asked him a question, he couldn’t say for certain. He was fighting a losing battle against the lure of sleep, fatigue distancing him from his body – he felt the hand on his shoulder, the blanket being pulled up over his legs, but he kinda _didn’t_ feel it too. He was just aware of it happening.

And then he wasn’t aware of anything at all.

 

 

 

 

 

o~O~o

 

 

 

 

Steve knew that his embrace was perhaps a touch too firm to be entirely comfortable, but if Clint shared the sentiment, he kept it to himself.

Pulling back after a moment, he settled his hands on the archer’s shoulders, doing a quick visual assessment. Other than looking exhausted and a shade paler than Steve remembered him, he appeared unharmed. Unharmed and _alive._ Thank God.

“Like what you see?” Clint drawled, waggling his eyebrows suggestively, startling a laugh out of Steve despite the lump lodged in his throat.

“It’s good to have you back, Clint,” he replied, low and sincere. “Hasn’t been the same around here without you.”

“I know, right?” Tony quipped, leaning against the foot of the bed with his arms crossed. “Suddenly there were more snacks in the kitchen and the coffee machine in my workshop miraculously stopped glitching.”

 _“Tony,”_ Steve protested, but Clint was grinning now, _actually_ grinning rather than the tired, fake thing he’d plastered on earlier when Steve had first barrelled through the door.

“What?” Tony spread his hands, feigning innocence, but Steve could see the expression of smug satisfaction behind the mask. “I’m just callin’ it like I see it, hotshot.”

Steve sighed, but it was out of fond exasperation more than anything else. He heard the doors to the elevator _hiss_ open again and turned in time to see Bruce pause just inside the threshold of the infirmary, eyes locked on Clint.

His fists were clenching and unclenching spasmodically, his breathing fast and shallow, and even in the room’s dimmed lighting Steve could see the sickly-green tinge to his skin.

“Bruce?” he called, his tone gentle. “You need a minute?”

“No. No, he’s good,” Clint interjected, sliding down from his perch on the edge of the bed, gripping onto the mattress for a moment while he found his balance. Then he started walking towards the physicist slowly. “We’re good, right, Big Guy?”

“Clint,” Bruce warned, his voice tight, taking half a step back and bringing his hands up to block the archer’s approach.

“You’re fine,” the younger Avenger insisted, his voice carefully calm, neutral. “You got this.”

He gently pushed Bruce’s hands out of the way and, moving slowly so as not to startle him, wrapped his arms tightly around the shorter man. There was a moment of silence in which nobody dared to breathe, then Bruce’s tense, trembling body seemed to sag a little and his hands came up to grip the back of Clint’s shirt. Steve breathed a sigh of relief and lowered the arm that he’d thrown up to shield Peter and Tony behind him. He trusted Hulk with his life, but it was a pretty crowded room and the green giant didn’t like machines.

Clint was the first to pull back, sliding his hands down from Bruce’s shoulders to grip his forearms, his expression carefully schooled. “See? You got this.”

Bruce nodded stiffly, taking another steadying breath. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.” The corner of his mouth kicked up in a wry smile. “Although I think the Other Guy has a few choice words he’d like to share with you about disappearing off like that for five months.” He cocked his head to one side. “So. Time travel, huh?”

The archer shrugged. “Apparently. No biggie, right?”

The scientist shook his head, still smiling. “Nothing to write home about.” He took Clint by the elbow, apparently fully recovered from his inner struggle. “You mind if I take a look at you anyway?”

The archer acquiesced and regained his previous perch on the edge of the bed as Bruce activated the hand-held scanning devices on the nearby cart. Steve moved to lean back against the edge of a workbench a short distance away from the group, arms crossed over his chest, watching how Clint’s eyes tracked Peter’s movements surreptitiously as the teenager inched his chair closer to the bedside. Finally the archer kicked out with a sock-clad foot to push against the back of the chair and send the kid spinning in a slow circle. Peter’s answering laugh was gratifying to hear. It had been an infrequent sound these past couple of months.

“Where’s Romanov?” Tony asked him quietly, sidling up to lean against the counter beside him.

“Cooling off,” Steve murmured back, and he knew that Tony would understand the implications of that.

Natasha didn’t _do_ big, emotional reunions, especially not in front of the rest of them; she’d wait until Clint was alone before showing up. Although he didn’t doubt that she was sitting upstairs in the Command Centre, watching his every move via the surveillance footage of the infirmary. 

Tony’s hand on his arm drew him from his thoughts. “Can I talk to you for a minute? In private?”

Something in the man’s casual tone sounded off, enough so that it immediately had Steve on edge. Nodding, he pushed himself away from the workbench and led the way further across the expansive room and into the small adjoining laboratory that was partitioned off from the rest of the infirmary by thick, tinted, bullet-proof glass. Tapping the touch-panel to seal the door closed behind them, he turned to face the mechanic more fully.

“What’s wrong?”

Tony dragged a hand down the lower half of his face and heaved a sigh, glancing through the tinted glass towards where Clint was doodling on Peter’s cast with a marker pen while Bruce listened to his chest.

“You said you found Tarius?” the billionaire asked after a beat.

Steve nodded grimly, banishing the gory image from his mind’s eye. “Clint’s arrow was still lodged in his throat. He died as soon as Mjolnir knocked the stone out of his hand. SHIELD bagged the body, but I doubt we’ll be getting many answers out of a corpse.”

“And Thor stayed with the stone?”

“He’s handled magic before, it seemed like the safest option.” Steve pulled out his Starkphone from a sealed pocket on the belt of his uniform and tapped at the screen to open up the gallery option. “I snapped a few pictures; figured maybe Clint could shed some light on the subject.”

Tony shook his head, but accepted the device and thumbed his way through the snapshots with a creased brow. “As far as Barton’s concerned, he was only gone five minutes. Some kinda cosmic time-jump. Doesn’t remember anything after firing that second arrow.”

Steve glanced towards the archer again, lips kicking up in a half-smile when Clint doodled a little too high and penned a squiggly line over Peter’s upper arm, the teenager squawking indignantly and shoving at him while Bruce threw his head back and laughed more openly and more genuinely than he had done in months.

“We need to get hold of Strange,” Tony spoke after a moment, and his tone had taken on that unsettling edge to it again. Steve glanced at him, brow creasing at the man’s pinched expression.

“You think the stone’s still dangerous?”

Tony took a deep breath. Then another. He dropped his gaze to the microscope on the workbench in front of them, a muscle in his jaw twitching.

“No. But I think Clint might be.”

Something hard and cold and heavy sank to the pit of Steve’s stomach. “What?”

“You know how I thought somebody had hacked into the tower’s mainframe and caused that power surge earlier?” Tony began, leaning his weight on his hands as he braced himself forwards against the workbench.

Steve nodded slowly. “You mentioned that, yeah.”

“Jarvis traced the source,” the mechanic continued grimly. “The power surge originated from the workshop. It was strong enough to knock out both the primary and backup systems without causing any physical damage. That shouldn’t be physically _possible_ , Steve. Nothing shorted out, nothing overloaded. All the systems just kicked the bucket simultaneously. Doesn’t that seem a little odd to you?”

“Okay, I’ll bite,” Steve relented, crossing his arms over his chest. “But what does this have to do with Clint?”

“He and Peter were in the workshop when it happened.”

“Tony, that doesn’t mean-”

“And he was in the elevator with me when it happened again.” Tony’s gaze had hardened a little. “I told him about Rhino, he gets understandably pissed off, and suddenly there’s a primary power drainage. It had a localised dispersal radius, Steve. Nothing else in the tower was affected, only the elevator shaft.”

That ball of dread in Steve’s stomach was beginning to twist itself into knots. “You think the stone did something to him?”

“I don’t _think_ , Steve, I _know,”_ Tony insisted, pushing himself back from the bench and fisting his hair in his hands for a brief moment, pacing to the opposite end of the small laboratory. “Look, I ran a few scans while he was asleep, okay? Medically, he’s fine. Core temperature’s a little low, but I attributed that to waking up in a field in the middle of winter.”

“But?” Steve prompted after a few beats.

“His energy readings are off the charts,” the shorter man replied flatly. “By all rights, a human being shouldn’t even register on the scanner’s radar, but his BMR output almost fried the sensor grid. According to what little data I could salvage, whatever’s inside him is registering at the same frequency as that goddamn stone.”

Steve’s gaze flickered back over to where Clint was sitting, one arm propped up on a pillow while Bruce took a blood sample, the archer’s legs swinging back and forth over the edge of the biobed.

“Have you told him about any of this?”

Tony shook his head, moving closer again. “He knows something’s wrong; I probably wasn’t as subtle as I could’ve been. But if these energy fluctuations are tied to emotional outbursts, I’m not exactly eager to break the news to him. There’s no easy way of saying _‘hey, by the way, I think you’ve been infected by magic’_.”

“We can’t keep it from him, Tony,” Steve reasoned. “He has a right to know what’s happening to him.”

“I know, I know.” Tony ran a hand through his hair, his stress evident in the tense set of his shoulders. “To tell you the truth, I was kinda hoping Strange would've shown up by now to disprove my theory.”

Steve reached out to settle a hand on the back of the man’s neck, thumb brushing against the skin gently. “Hey. We’ll get through this. Clint’s alive; he’s _home._ We can handle a little collateral damage, right?”

Tony managed to muster up a smile, although it looked tired and worn. “Right.”

 

 

 

 

**o~O~o**

 

 

 

 

Clint couldn’t sleep.

Not that he wasn’t still _exhausted_ , because apparently time travel seriously took it out of a guy, but he’d never been overly fond of the infirmary, and the bed wasn’t his own, and Phil wasn’t here, and _he was still stuck five freakin’ months in the future._

The holographic projection of his vital signs flickered where it floated above his bed, and Clint deliberately clamped down on the swell of anxiety in his chest, forcing it back into hiding and taking several deep, steadying breaths until the images stopped glitching.

Apparently he had superpowers now. Woo.

He covered his eyes with the back of one hand and sighed heavily. He ought to be grateful, really, that the magical-cosmic-stone-of-destiny hadn’t just incinerated him like half of SHIELD apparently thought it had. Although in more depressing news, Hawkeye’s popularity had seemingly increased exponentially after his apparent death. According to Natasha, the wobbly cell phone video of his sudden disappearance mid-battle had over twenty million hits on Youtube, and sales for Hawkeye merchandise had gone through the roof since his untimely demise. Death had done wonders for his street cred.

But oh god, _Natasha._ Seeing her like that had been a punch to the gut. They’d both been registered as MIA before, it was almost considered an occupational hazard for agents who handled the type of classified missions that they’d frequently been given, but _five months_ was a long time to drop off the radar.

Clint had anticipated the slap. He’d been expecting the low, furious rant in fluent Russian, frequently interspersed with violent hand gestures and prods to his chest, and the snarled, sincere _“ublyudok”_. But he hadn’t anticipated the _hug_.

 _A_ hug, sure; they’d never really had an issue with getting into each other’s personal space. But the way she’d wrapped her arms around his neck and _clung_ to him, muttering empty threats of evisceration into his ear in a voice that had sounded hoarse and choked and…yeah, no, he hadn’t been ready to handle that stoically.

The resulting energy surge had knocked out power in the infirmary for almost ten minutes.

“Clint.”

His breath froze to ice in his lungs at the voice, at the depth of emotion behind the name. Unclenching tensed muscles, he dropped his hand away from his eyes and turned his head towards the door. Steve’s chair was empty – apparently the captain had vacated the room while Clint was still lost in thought. But beyond the workbench, backlit by the glow of the elevator’s lights, stood the one person that Clint was certifiably _not_ ready to face.

Swallowing past the lump that had already begun to form in his throat, he pushed himself upright slowly and swung his legs around to dangle over the edge of the biobed, keeping his gaze locked with Phil’s.

“Hey.”

The older man remained stationary for a moment longer, his face deceptively blank – but Clint could see the lines of pain in his worn features, the unusually tense posture that belied his act of stoicism. It was for his benefit, Clint knew. Because of course Tony would’ve briefed Coulson on his new-found superpowers.

Then Phil was moving towards him, eating up the distance between them with long, determined strides. Clint just remained frozen, a sitting duck, and watched him approach, feeling his heartbeat jump up to a rapid staccato in his chest.

It wasn’t until the soft fabric of Phil’s suit jacket was smushed against his cheek that Clint remembered how to draw breath. He pressed his face into Phil’s shoulder, his breathing ragged and shallow, grief and guilt and _relief_ intermingling in one fell surge, overwhelming in their intensity. Phil stayed silent, but the strength of his hold spoke volumes, and Clint didn’t trust his own voice to fill the void, not with the way his eyes were prickling traitorously.

He wasn’t sure how long they stayed locked like that, Phil standing between the archer’s knees, thighs pressed flush against the side of the biobed, but it wasn’t long enough. Because Clint wasn’t ready to handle the expression on Phil’s face when he finally did pull away to look at him.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted, because he _was_ – he was sorry for the both of them.

Phil’s brow creased fractionally as he shook his head, cupping Clint’s face in his hands. “Don’t,” he murmured, his voice a touch hoarser than usual. “None of this was your fault, Clint.”

Clint covered one of the hands with his own, his throat aching again. “I’m guessing Stark told you about my new party trick?”

Nodding, Phil stroked a thumb back and forth over his cheekbone, their eyes still locked. “We’ll find a way to fix this. I promise.”

“And if it can’t be fixed?”

“Then we’ll work out how to control it,” Phil answered without missing a beat. His gaze flickered down to Clint’s mouth momentarily, and he swallowed again. “But right now I need to kiss you. Is that going to be a problem?”

Clint assured him that it wouldn’t, and helped speed things along by dragging Phil in by the knot of his tie. The archer expected the kiss to be the hard, hungry, desperate type that they’d often shared after a particularly close call on a mission, when one or both of them had almost earned themselves a one-way ticket to the pearly gates, but it wasn’t like that at all. The kiss was soft, sweet, _lingering,_ like they were curled up on the couch on a Saturday night with a bowl of popcorn and a movie playlist of classic action flicks. Clint’s eyes grew hot again at the tenderness of it. Because it was a wordless “ _I love you”_ – a silent _“I’m here”_.

After a few minutes, Phil pulled away, but leaned in again a moment later to brush half a dozen quick, feather-light kisses against his tingling lips. Then he pressed their foreheads together and sighed, his eyes closed, one hand still cupping Clint’s jaw and the side of his neck.

“I know it’s probably belated,” he murmured, his voice less weighty than before, “but welcome home.”

Clint tried for a smile, although it felt forced and tremulous. “Thanks. Sorry I didn’t bring you any souvenirs.”

“I’m sure I’ll survive the disappointment.”

When Phil pulled back again after Lord knows how long (‘not long enough’ seemed to work in this instance, too), Clint worked to smooth out the rumples in his suit, straightening the twisted tie with careful fingers.

“So,” he hedged after a long moment of silence, his gaze still fixed on the length of dark fabric between his fingers. “Five months. I take it a lot of shit’s gone down while I’ve been away?”

“Mm.”

“I appreciate the update, thanks for that. I particularly enjoyed the part where you hummed and told me _nothing_.”

Phil chuckled and cupped his face again, kissing the downwards tilt of his mouth. “Not tonight," he murmured, and used his gentle hold on Clint to guide him back down again to rest against the pillows. "It’s late, and we’re both tired. I’ll access my mission reports in the morning - there are a couple of new villains on the scene that you’ll need to know about, but the rest can wait.”

Clint arched an eyebrow, rolling onto his side and scooting to the edge of the bed to bring their faces closer together. “You mean you’re not gonna make me dredge through five months’ worth of paperwork to figure out what I’ve missed?”

The senior agent leaned in to brush a kiss against the corner of his mouth, smiling.

“Don’t count on it.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Took a little longer than expected to round this one off, the plot bunnies kept tossing extra cabbages onto the cart before I'd finished with the carrots. But chapter 3 is already well under way, because this is a time travel fic and apparently that means I write things backwards.
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed the chapter!


	3. Chapter 3

 

Clint was allowed to leave the infirmary the following morning, on the understanding that he didn’t try to remove the portable monitor that Bruce had strapped to his wrist.

“And you need to let me know if you start experiencing any new symptoms,” the doctor added, withdrawing the needle from the crook of Clint’s elbow and taping a ball of cotton wool over the pinprick. “I’ll contact you with the results of the FBC once I’ve run it through the analyser, it shouldn’t take more than an hour or so.”

“Thanks, Doc.” Clint hopped down from the edge of the bed and reached for the clean shirt and jacket that Phil had left for him on a chair nearby. “Is Tony around? Figured he’d be jumping at the chance to scan me some more.”

“He left for The Hub a couple of hours ago,” Bruce replied, stripping off his vinyl blue gloves and moving over to the sink to wash his hands. “Fury wanted him to take a look at the stone before they sealed it in The Fridge.”

Clint’s brow creased fractionally at that. He found himself less than convinced that SHIELD, regardless of their advanced technological capabilities, would be able to permanently sustain the artifact in lock-up. Sorcery wasn’t something that any of them fully understood, perhaps with the exception of Thor, and a magic stone capable of dragging someone five months into the future? Clint doubted something like that could be successfully contained for long, even _with_ the Asgardian’s help.

“Hey.” Bruce’s hand on his arm startled him from his thoughts. “Try not to think about it too much. We’ll figure things out.” He gave the archer’s shoulder an encouraging squeeze. “Why don’t you grab some breakfast? Your blood sugar’s still running a little low this morning.”

Food always helped, regardless of the situation, so Clint couldn’t think of a legitimate reason to decline the suggestion. He was hesitant about using the elevator after what happened the previous evening, but he was still bone-weary from the whole ‘time travelling’ ordeal, and the thought of taking the stairs to the communal kitchen/dining area eleven floors up was fucking depressing. So he bit the bullet and stepped inside, determinedly keeping his thoughts calm and focused to avoid any magic-related incidents. Bruce and Tony seemed pretty sure that the energy fluctuations were tied to adrenaline spikes, so as long as Clint didn’t lose his shit, everything would be fine.

Of course, when the elevator doors slid open to reveal the communal dining floor, he had to retract that previous statement.

_Everything was not fine._

It was hard to imagine that so much could have changed over the course of five months, but it had. It was like Clint had arrived on some previously undiscovered floor that just _happened_ to resemble a communal kitchen/dining area, because this wasn’t anything like the one he’d eaten lunch in the previous day – by his timeline, anyway. Furniture and fittings were out of place and the wrong colour, there were gleaming marble islands in places there hadn’t been before, potted plants with assorted herbs along the shelf nearest the half-wall of windows – and Jesus Christ, even _those_ had moved.

Carefully keeping his emotional response in check, aware of how rapidly his heart was beating as blood pulsed loudly in his ears, he took another steadying breath and pushed past the cold, sickly feeling that had settled itself in his stomach, crossing over to the fridge.

There’d be juice. There was always juice. They still had juice in the future, right?

Clint was relieved to discover that yes, they did. And it was ridiculous, this whole fucking situation, standing in an unfamiliar kitchen five months in the future and getting emotional over a carton of _Tropicana_.

“Here.”

Steve had come up behind him at some point, and Clint wondered just how long he’d been standing there, staring at the drinks section in the refrigerator. The taller blond gave him a grim, sympathetic sort of smile and offered him the empty glass he was holding – good thing too, because Clint wouldn’t have known _where_ to begin looking for one.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, grabbing the juice and closing the fridge door with his hip. He took a seat on one of the tall stools at the breakfast bar, because sitting down felt like a good idea, given the way his head was spinning again. “Did Tony get tired of the old layout or something?”

Steve shook his head, taking down a mixing bowl from one of the cupboards near the stove. “Doombot attack,” he explained, arranging ingredients and utensils in a neat row along the breakfast bar. “Back in September. Thor fried a bunch in mid-flight, but they ended up crashing straight through the window. Blew up on impact and took out half the floor. We had to redecorate a bit.”

Clint swallowed, his throat feeling dry, and rubbed at the condensation on the juice carton. “Sounds like I missed out on all the good stuff.”

“You’ll catch up soon enough,” Steve reassured. “Just give it time.”

He leaned across the counter to pluck the juice out of Clint’s loose grip and pour it into the glass. The archer frowned at him, but it lacked any real heat.

“Thanks, _Mom_.”

The corner of Steve’s mouth kicked up in a quiet smile as he leaned back. “Sorry. Old habits.”

“Shit.” Clint arched an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me we’ve adopted a sprog?”

That startled a laugh out of Steve, and his smile once he’d recovered was more genuine than his previous attempts. “No. No, nothing like that.” He measured out a cup of flour and dumped it in the bowl. “But you know what Tony’s like this early in the morning.”

“Obnoxious, sleep-deprived, grumpy, unfairly attra-”

“Uncoordinated,” Steve interjected firmly, but his tone was amused as he flicked a bit of flour towards the archer. “His hand-eye coordination’s shocking before his first cup of coffee; half the pot ends up on the floor if I don’t get there before he does.”

Clint tilted his head to one side, narrowing his eyes a little. He _had_ been gone five months. There was a fair chance that Steve and Tony might have actually gotten their shit together and started dating while he was away. It was hard to say for sure, because the super-soldier had always used that fondly exasperated tone of voice when he was talking about Tony, and the pair of them had been acting like an old married couple for almost a year now, only with a _shit-ton_ of unresolved sexual tension between them that had slowly been driving the rest of the team crazy. But it was still a possibility. A guy could live in hope, right?

Steve paused in his mixing when he caught Clint staring at him. “What?”

 _‘Are you finally banging Stark?’_ the archer wanted to ask, but didn’t. Because he had tact. Sometimes.

“Nothin’.” He took several long gulps of his juice to excuse himself from further questioning. After a short pause Steve shook his head with another smile and resumed mixing his pancake batter, and Clint felt it was safe to lower his glass. He’d bide his time. Tony was a pretty handsy person, with the people he trusted, and if he and Steve were finally _doing it,_ Clint doubted the mechanic would keep kissing to a strictly-behind-closed-doors activity. He’d find out soon enough.

“Is anyone else awake?” Steve asked a while later, once three pancakes were already sizzling on the griddle.

“Phil’s upstairs,” Clint replied around a yawn, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “SHIELD contacted him about an hour ago for an update, he’ll probably be a while. And Bruce is up, but he’s science-ing, so God knows when he’ll show up.”

Steve smiled, flipping one of the pancakes over. “Jarvis? Could you let Bruce know there’s coffee and pancakes waiting for him upstairs if he wants them? Ask Natasha too, if she’s awake.”

 _“Certainly, sir,”_ the computer replied without missing a beat. _“Miss Romanov is currently engaged in a conference call with SHIELD headquarters, would you like me to interrupt?”_

“Absolutely,” Clint said, in sync with Steve’s immediate _‘no’._

“No,” Steve repeated, a little louder. “Thank you, Jarvis.”

_“Of course, sir.”_

 It was a pity, really. Because the mental image of Black Widow maintaining her usual air of stoic-badass indifference while Jarvis interrupted Nick Fury to ask her if she’d like to join them for pancakes was absolutely _priceless._ Tasha would probably say yes, too, just to see the muscle in Fury’s jaw twitch.

“How about Bugboy?” Clint asked, lifting his glass again to take another swig. “He awake yet, Jay?”

_“Peter is currently asleep, Agent Barton. Although his bedside alarm is due to go off in eleven minutes, so I anticipate that he’ll be joining you shortly.”_

“Cancel it,” Steve ordered quietly, flipping the pancakes onto a plate and carrying them over to the breakfast bar to set down in front of Clint.

_“Captain?”_

“Cancel the alarm, Jarvis,” Steve reiterated, returning to the skillet to dole out more batter. “Let him sleep.”

 _“Certainly, sir,”_ the AI agreed, and sounded genuinely pleased to carry out the task rather than his usual pseudo-chipper sarcasm shit.

Clint smirked, dumping an excessive amount of syrup over his pancakes and tucking in with gusto. “Kid’s not gonna like that.”

“No, probably not,” Steve acknowledged with a sigh, leaning his hip against the counter to watch him while he waited for the pancakes to brown. “But he’s still healing, he can’t afford to lose out on sleep.”

The archer sobered again at the reminder, brow creasing as he chewed slowly. “I got the impression from Tony last night that the showdown between Peter and that Rhino guy got a little rough,” he hedged, cutting himself another bite. “Between you and me, how bad are we talking?”

Steve’s lips thinned a bit as he turned back to the stove, his posture visibly tensing up for a moment before sagging again with the weight of his sigh. “Multiple fractures to his left arm,” he disclosed after a beat, his tone grim but controlled. “Cracked ribs. Second degree burns along his right side. Internal bleeding. And enough contusions to keep him sore for days, even with his accelerated healing. He was unconscious when SHIELD ground teams arrived – if they hadn’t managed to tranquilise Rhino so quickly…” He sighed again and shook his head. “I won’t lie to you, Clint; we came pretty close to losing him.”

“Jesus.” Clint’s hand gripped the fork hard enough for his fingers to hurt, but it was that or get seriously pissed off, and he wasn’t keen to be the cause of another power outage. He could already see his heartrate ticking upwards into triple digits on his wrist monitor. “When did it all happen?”

“About five days ago,” Steve replied, and sent him worried look when Clint’s fork suddenly screeched sharply against the surface of his plate. “Hey. You alright?”

Clint waved away his concern and forced down another bite of his breakfast, even though he’d lost his appetite. He was fine. Everything was fine. Peter had almost died less than a week ago and then shrugged the whole thing off as _‘just a broken arm’_ , but sure, Clint was fine. He gulped at his juice, reaching for the carton again once his glass was empty simply to give his hands something to _do_.

“So I’m guessing his healing factor’s kicked in nicely, since he’s not holed up in intensive care back at HQ,” he commented wryly, licking a streak of juice from his thumb where it had tumbled over the rim of his overfull glass.

Steve nodded, returning his attention to the pancakes. “His internal injuries will take a little longer to fully heal, like mine do, but the hairline fractures and most of the external injuries mended themselves within the first forty-eight hours.”

Well, thank fuck for small mercies. Last thing the kid needed was the pain and frustration of long-term injuries. A particularly nasty bullet wound to the shoulder had put Clint out of commission for nine months once, back when he was still a fairly new asset, and if it hadn’t been for Phil redirecting Clint’s pent-up frustrations into more fruitful activities, he probably would have shot his physical therapist.

“And his arm?” Clint prompted, taking another bite, because appetite or not these were _seriously_ good pancakes.

“The doctors want to give it another few days in the cast,” the taller blond replied. “It was a pretty nasty break. But Bruce says the x-rays are looking good.”

 _“Agent Barton,”_ Jarvis spoke, and Clint’s fork paused mid-air. _“Your presence has been requested in the Command Centre at your earliest convenience.”_

“Phil?” Clint asked, although he already knew the answer.

_“Indeed, sir. Agent Coulson has recently terminated his conversation with Director Fury.”_

“Awesome.” Clint wolfed down the last of his pancakes before hopping down from his stool. “Thanks for breakfast, Cap.”

Steve glanced back over his shoulder to smile at him. “No problem. Give me a call if you need anything, alright?”

Clint sketched a sloppy salute. “Copy that. See you around.”

“I’d better, soldier.”

“Flirt,” Clint accused, and it was worth it to hear the familiar rumble of Steve’ laugh as the elevator doors slid closed behind him a moment later.

He was really, _really_ glad that some things hadn’t changed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

o~O~o

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Lose the frown, Stark.” A bag of M&M’s bounced off the side of his head. “You’re unsettling my staff.”

Tony sighed and dropped his touchpad onto the nearby desk. “Look, Sato, I like you – honestly, I do, which coming from me is a big thing, okay? But if you throw food at me _one more time,_ I’ll-”

“What?” The technician glanced up from her own workstation, arching an eyebrow. “Talk me to death? Because believe me, that’ll be an improvement on this whole,” she gestured at him vaguely with her stylus, “angry, brooding thing you’ve got going on. Barton’s back, we’ve got the stone, and the guy who caused all of this is lying on a cold slab down in the morgue. How come you’re the only guy who’s not smiling?”

“Maybe it has something to do with that big, shiny rock of doom we’ve been left holding,” Tony suggested, his tone dripping with false cheer. “You know, the one capable of turning garden lizards into freakin’ Godzillas. Time-travelling Godillas, at that.”

“Tarius is dead,” the SHIELD agent reiterated. “I don’t think we need to be worrying about a reptilian invasion any time soon, unless Connors rears his scaly head again. Relax, would you? You’re supposed to be helping us analyse the damn thing, not telling us to run for the hills.”

Tony spread his hands, exasperated. “We’ve been sitting down here for almost six hours, Mei, and all we’ve done is confirm the stone’s energy signature. Which is basically just the scientific equivalent of going ‘yeah, that’s the magic stone we’ve been tracking for the past five months’. Our scans can’t bypass its magical forcefield thingy – hell, it might not even exist as a quantifiable mass in this plane of existence, who the hell knows? It’s _magic_. You’re better off consulting Thor.”

“We have,” Mei insisted bluntly, unaffected by his outburst. “He said the stone had stabilised itself and that he didn’t think it would pose a risk to anyone as long as they didn’t touch it.” She glanced back towards the view-screen on the opposite wall that displayed a live feed of the pressurised containment unit that lay beyond. “Actually, he said it was…sleeping.”

“Sleeping?” the billionaire echoed, his eyes cutting to stare at the amber stone. “Are you telling me it’s fucking _sentient?”_

“Aye,” Thor confirmed as he strode into the research lab, a young male technician scurrying out of his path before he could get run over. “It is a Soul Gem, although I have not encountered one its likeness before.” He clapped a hand down on Tony’s shoulder and offered him the mug he was carrying. “Drink and be at ease, my friend. I have conversed with the spirit guardians of your realm – they will contact Stephen Strange on our behalf.”

Tony blinked, curling his fingers around the warm ceramic and finding comfort in its familiarity, which was a welcome distraction from the realisation that Thor had just casually practised some major Voodoo shit to send a telegram to Dr Strange in another dimension. Because clearly this was a thing that happened every day on Asgard.

Taking a large gulp of the too-strong-to-be-entirely-safe coffee, Tony leaned against the solid wall of muscle, because he was fucking _tired_ and Thor wouldn’t mind being used as a makeshift pillar.

“Good to know. Wondered where you’d run off to.” It took him a moment to realise that something was missing, and he felt his brow crease he glanced down at the Asgardian’s empty hands. “Where’s Mjolnir?”

“I thought it unwise to allow two objects born of eternal magic to remain so close together,” Thor explained, sending a cheerful smile towards some of the gawking scientists on the other side of the lab. “One might trigger a reaction out of the other. And considering the infinite power contained in that stone, I felt it best to leave Mjolnir in the dining hall where no such unwanted interactions could take place.”

Tony hid a grin behind the rim of his mug, picturing Mjolnir sitting in the middle of a plastic table next to the salt and pepper shakers. Maybe the catering staff would form a circle around it, take turns trying to lift it like some modern re-enactment of _The Sword in the Stone_.

“Lady Sato,” the Asgardian spoke a moment later, interrupting Tony’s mind-drama. “I must return now to the Avengers Tower and reunite with my comrades. I do not believe I can be of any further assistance here - my knowledge of sorcery is limited, ‘tis best that we wait until Stephen Strange returns from the Otherworld. Allow the stone to sleep, and no harm will befall you.”

The specialist nodded, reaching out to shake his hand. “Understood. And thanks for all your help.” She stepped back and put her fingers to her mouth to give a loud, shrill whistle. “Listen up! We’re on babysitting duty until Strange gets here, so everyone go grab something to eat that _isn’t_ out of the vending machine while you still can. You’ve got fifteen minutes.”

There was a general scramble as the nearby technicians threw down their touchpads and rehoused their equipment before making a less-than-professional dash for the door.

“I’m heading home too,” Tony announced after the clamour had died down. “Thor’s right, Mei, there’s nothing else we can do here until Strange shows up. Just don’t poke it and you’ll be fine.”

“Says the man renowned for poking things until he gets a response,” the agent grumbled, but there was no bite to it, and her hands weren’t as firm as they could have been when she pulled the empty coffee mug from his grip and shoved him in the direction of the door. “Get out of my lab, Stark. At least one of us should get some sleep.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony blew her a kiss as he let Thor steer him out. “Love you too, Sato.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

o~O~o

 

 

 

 

 

 

So apparently they owned a bear now.

“Shit, sorry,” Peter hurried from the elevator and bodily pulled the crushing, furry weight off Clint’s chest while the archer continued to lay there on the workshop floor, dazed, saliva cooling on his chin. “This is Sully. He’s kinda friendly.”

Pushing himself up onto his elbows, Clint managed to get a better look at the beast. Not a bear, on closer inspection, but near enough in size – a St Bernard, if he wasn’t mistaken, and a freakin’ _huge_ one at that. And ‘kinda friendly’ was an understatement, if the way he was trying to lick the kid’s face off was any indication.

Clint arched an amused eyebrow at the pair. “He yours?”

“Yeah.” Peter grinned, sitting up on his knees now so that the dog could rest its gigantic head over his shoulder, tail wagging enthusiastically as the teenager scrubbed his uninjured hand through the thick fur. “Rescued him from an AIM lab in Montreal a couple of months ago. Kinda got attached, y’know?”

“I can see that.” Clint moved to sit cross-legged when the dog turned to look at him again, and held a hand out for it to sniff, grinning when a cold, wet nose pressed against his palm a moment later. “AIM, huh? He some kind of super-dog?”

The teenager’s expression shuttered a little as his gaze flickered back down to the animal. “They were experimenting in advanced cybernetics; organ replacement, biomechanical enhancements, that sorta thing. He’s got a few mechanical implants, but nothing that’ll pose a threat to anyone else.”

The archer frowned a little. “SHIELD took down the bastards, right?”

“Hell yeah,” the teenager confirmed, grinning again. “They never even saw us coming.”

“Good.”

Clint had always been a sucker for dogs. There had been a few smaller breeds with the travelling circus he’d worked with for a number of years after Barney’s imprisonment, and to be honest they’d been the only thing he’d regretted leaving behind when SHIELD had offered him a chance to do something better. Unfortunately, life working as a field agent for an international spy organisation didn’t exactly present the opportunity to adopt pets, unless they were the sort of super-pet who could go weeks, potentially months, without feeding if an undercover op went south. But he’d always wanted one. _Always._

Well. At least _one_ good thing had happened to the team over the course of the past five months. The rest of it had sounded pretty fucking shit-balls.

True to his word, Phil had sat him down and given him a basic debrief on all the major goings-on in the world; everything he’d missed out on, from the assassination of leading world officials to the discovery of an island off the south pacific where scientists had found prehistoric life still roaming free. The latter news report had been pretty cool. The lengthy list of villains that the Avengers had been forced to contend with during his absence had been decidedly less awesome. But he was grateful for the intel – even if he couldn’t _remember_ any it, he still felt better now that he had dates and facts and mission reports to fill in the gaps; pictures and video clips and surveillance footage to help him visualise new threats. That had been one of his primary concerns beforehand – that their arch nemesis could’ve walk past him in the street and Clint wouldn’t have been able to recognise them.

“Jesus, fuck, _ow,_ ” Clint cursed, when 250lbs of furry canine promptly collapsed across his thighs.

“Sorry, shoulda warned you about that,” Peter spoke, looking entirely unapologetic. “Sully thinks he’s a lap dog.”

Clint couldn’t keep the grin from his face, even though he was rapidly losing circulation to his feet. He mussed up the soft fur behind the dog’s ears, watching as the thick, fluffy tale swiped back and forth across the workshop floor like a manic windscreen wiper.

“Sully, huh?”

“Shut up,” Peter muttered, but he was smiling. “Monsters Inc. is awesome.”

Clint held up his hands in surrender. “Hey, no arguments here.” Sully gave a disgruntled, sneezing sort of huff and craned his neck around to stare at Clint with big, pleading eyes, and _shit_ , this dog already had him whipped. He grinned anew and arched an eyebrow “Oh, I’m sorry, did I stop?”

The dog huffed another soft woof, tale still swishing. Clint lasted further two seconds, perhaps two-point-five, before giving in and sinking his fingers back into the soft, thick fur.

Peter snickered, leaning his weight back on his uninjured arm as he watched them. “You’ve done it now. He’s gonna want that 24/7.”

Clint gave an easy shrug. “I could think of worse things. Oh, which reminds me.” He lifted a hand from the dog’s back and crooked a finger at the teenager. “C’mere.”

Watching him closely, eyes narrowed in suspicion, Peter nevertheless inched closer on his knees until he could sit down beside him. “What?”

Lifting his hand again, Clint lightly cuffed the back of Peter’s head.

“Ow,” the kid complained; a disgruntled, petulant sort of whine. “Dude, what…?”

“That’s for downplaying your injuries as ‘just a broken arm’,” Clint told him, but he gently mussed up the younger man’s hair where his hand had struck, because he’d stopped being pissed off about the whole thing hours ago. “Idiot. How am I supposed to cover your weak spots in a fight if I don’t know you’re compromised, huh?”

Peter reached up to shove his hand away – it was awkward, since the arm he would’ve used was still in a sling – but there was a tiny smile tugging at the corner of his mouth nevertheless.

“Look, I was gonna tell you,” he insisted quietly, once Clint had returned his attention to the beast that was currently crushing his legs. “I just didn’t want you freaking out about me, not when you’d just jumped through time. You had your own shit to deal with.”

“Language.”

“Fuck off.”

Clint laughed, long and hard and unreservedly, because fuck, he loved this kid. He might’ve skipped ahead five months, but Peter had hardly changed at all, thank God.

Sully raised his head from the floor suddenly, sharply, and Clint paused in his petting to glance down at him. After half a beat, the dog gave another soft ' _woof'_ , claws scrabbling against the smooth surface of the floor as he levered himself upright and went trotting over to the door eagerly, tail wagging in a steady rhythm. The elevator doors on the other side of the glass partition slid open a moment later and a familiar figure stepped out.

“Peter, what have I told you about letting that mutt down here?” Tony grouched as he strode through into the workshop, although the gentle hand he ran over the Sully’s head as the dog trotted by his side belied the disapproving tone of his voice.

“Dogs are _therapeutic_ , Tony,” the teenager insisted, shooting the mechanic a winning smile. “It’s been scientifically proven. Can’t argue with science.”

Tony activated the holographic imager at one of the workstations. “Oh yeah? Says who?”

“Bruce.”

“Fair enough.” The mechanic reached across to accept the full glass of smoothie that Dummy had trundled over to him with. “Thanks, buddy.”

Clint rolled smoothly to his feet, dusting dog-hair off his pants. “Where’s Steve? He told me he was heading upstairs to meet you on the landing pad.”

The mechanic hummed noncommittally, waving away a few holograms without really looking at them. When Clint moved closer and jabbed him less than gently in the side, he yelped and side-stepped the archer before raising his hand in surrender.

“Alright, alright, _geez._ He and Coulson are in the Command Centre, arguing with the higher-ups at SHIELD.”

“About me?” Clint surmised, and it wasn’t a question.

“Among other things,” Tony confirmed. “It’s all just politics, don’t worry about it.”

“Clint!” a voice boomed from the doorway before Clint could dwell the matter too long. “Welcome back to the mortal realm, my feathered friend.”

The archer grinned, relaxing his body so that it didn’t hurt as much when Thor pulled him into a crushing embrace, the toes of his boots hanging an inch above the ground. He was grateful, at least, that Thor was wearing regular clothes rather than his Asgardian armour, because otherwise his face would’ve had a pretty vivid imprint of the decorative runes that were intricately carved into the man’s breastplate. Muscle was easier to hug than metal.

“Hey, man,” he wheezed. “Missed you too.”

Thor set him down before oxygen deprivation could truly set it, but kept a firm, supporting grip on his shoulders as he took a step back, regarding Clint with a curious expression. The archer raised his brows at the close scrutiny.

“What?”

Instead of answering him, Thor glanced towards Tony. “It is as you said; the power within the stone and the magic that lies within Clint are one and the same. Although it, too, is at rest.” The Asgardian’s gaze shifted back to Clint as he slid his hand down to hover over the archer’s breastbone. “If I may?”

Not entirely sure what was going on, but willing to trust his teammate, Clint nodded. With a confident sort of smile, Thor pressed his hand against the archer’s chest, fingers splayed, and closed his eyes.

“Breathe deeply,” the blond advised. “And allow yourself to relax. This will only take a moment.”

Clint complied, allowing the tension to seep from him on his next exhale. Ten seconds passed. Twenty. Thirty. Clint waited for something to change; for something to shift or burn or glow or for the world to explode, God knows. But nothing happened. He shot Tony a questioning look, but the mechanic wasn’t looking at them. Actually, Tony had his eyes half-closed as though he was about to sneeze. Except he was keeping them that way. Unblinking. Surely that was uncomfortable?

It took him a few seconds longer to realise that the workshop had gone unnaturally quiet. The usual background humming of equipment, the whirring of the bots, the buzz of the holographic projectors – it had all stopped.

Dread curling cold and wet in his stomach, he took a step back, staring at Thor’s hand where it remained outstretched, unmoving.

“Thor,” he spoke, his voice hoarse, then louder, “Thor, what did you _do?_ ” He glanced up at the ceiling. “Jarvis? Jarvis, c’mon buddy, don’t do this to me.”

At the loud, oppressive silence, he retreated a few more paces, his breathing quickening. He could see Peter from this angle; the teenager still sat on the floor, leaning back against Dummy’s base with Sully’s head resting in his lap, the bot’s claw perched on his shoulder with its camera angled down towards the dog curiously while the fingers of Peter’s uninjured hand curled in the thick fur. But he wasn’t moving. None of them were moving.

“Shit,” he managed, because the alternative was hyperventilating. “Fucking _shit._ ”

Running a hand down the lower half of his face, he walked backwards until his shoulders impacted with the wall, finding the solidity of it grounding in a world that was very quickly falling apart. _Breathe. Breathe, Barton. This is just a blip, you can fix this._

He pressed a hand to his sternum, hard enough for it to hurt. Whatever Thor had done, it had triggered something inside him. Magic, superpowers, whatever they were – they’d originated from _inside_ of him. And he was damn well going to find a way to clamp back down on them

 _“If you’re the source of a problem, you’re its primary solution” -_ Phil’s phrase of choice. There had been a time, during their early days together when Clint had been a dumb kid using his sarcasm and stand-offish attitude as a shield, when those words would have frustrated him to no end. But he found comfort in them now.

The only issue was, he was flying this jet without an instruction manual. And it didn’t help that his head was starting to pound again – the same sharp, stabbing pain he’d experienced last night when he’d first woken up in that field. It made concentrating particularly difficult, and all he wanted to do was slide down the wall and curl up on the floor for a little bit. Maybe cry a little.

A dull sort of ache in his backside told him that his legs had given out, but he was too busy trying to keep his head from exploding to care much, pressing his hands against his temples as the shrill ringing in his ears grew louder and more high-pitched. His eyes were screwed tight shut against the pain, but despite that he could still see the lights in the room flickering on and off through his eyelids.

“Stop,” he gritted out painfully, desperately, something warm and wet running over his lips and down his chin. “Stop. Stop it. _Stop.”_

And then it did.

In a split second the ringing in his ears ceased and the pain in his head began to dissipate. He lay still for a moment, curled up on his side, fighting the urge to retch as chills raced up and down his body, limbs trembling.

Slowly, cautiously, he opened his eyes, and was relieved to find the lighting dim enough to be almost non-existent. He was still in the workshop, but he was alone, and it was _cold._ But there was no sign of damage, no sign that his magical mojo had caused an explosion. Maybe the others had evacuated to a safe distance, maybe _they’d_ been the ones who’d found a way to stop it…

Or maybe he’d jumped again. Even with his mind still reeling from its recent torment, the thought came through clear and loud.

“Jarvis?” he asked, in a voice that sounded raspy and slurred even to his own ears. “Jarvis, you there?”

 _“I’m here, Agent Barton,”_ came the AI’s immediate reply, calm and collected and _exactly_ what Clint needed to hear. _“Remain where you are. I am alerting the Avengers as to your whereabouts as we speak.”_

Clint shook his head, pushing himself up on weak arms to crawl slowly, painfully towards the exit. “No. Where’s Phil?”

 _“Agent Coulson is in your suite, sir.”_ The automatic door slid open for him obligingly, as did the elevator when Clint finally reached it, although Jarvis still sounded put-out. _“Agent Barton, you appear to require medical attention. I advise that you cease mobilisation immediately.”_

“No,” Clint repeated, the word stronger now as he pushed himself up to sit against the wall of the elevator. Jarvis had dutifully dimmed the lights to something more bearable. “Take me upstairs. To Phil. Take me…take me to Phil, Jarvis.”

He wasn’t sure of anything else at the moment, but he knew he needed his partner’s rational thinking and calm persona and his brutal honesty. If he’d skipped ahead again, he wanted someone who’d tell him straight, someone who wouldn’t freak the fuck out when he collapsed out of the elevator onto their carpet. He loved his team, but there was only one person who met all of the above criteria.

The elevator slowed to a stop, the motion enough to set his stomach churning threateningly again. But then the doors were opening and Phil was suddenly _there_ , kneeling beside him with his hands on Clint’s face, calling his name.

“M’okay,” he slurred, fumbling to curl a hand in Phil’s jacket. Except Phil wasn’t wearing a suit, he was wearing a loose t-shirt and sleeping pants, and _fuck, shit, time-jump._ He gripped onto one of his partner’s wrists instead. “How long?” When the older man visibly hesitated, Clint squeezed the wrist tighter. “Phil, _how long?”_

A muscle in the man’s jaw twitched, but his thumb against Clint’s cheek was tender. “Eight days, ten hours. Welcome back.”

Clint dropped his hand again, slumping a little further as he closed his eyes.

“Fuck.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooooooooo you remember how I said it probably wouldn't be longer than 6 chapters? Yeah, I lied. It's really more like 8. Sam Wilson's butted his way into my heart and refused to back off, even though I had a completely different intro-story planned for him. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed the chapter! I know the Soul Gem bombshell and the whole time-jump thing are probably making this story look a little all over the place, but I promise it'll all make sense in the end. 
> 
> Thanks again for giving such amazing feedback on the first two chapters, I'm super excited to have your support. 
> 
> xxx


	4. Chapter 4

 

When he next opened his eyes, Clint was greeted by a woefully familiar sight – the tiled ceiling of the medical wing at SHIELD headquarters.

Nothing hurt, though, which came as a pleasant surprise considering that his last vague, foggy memory was of invisible knives being driven through his skull as he fought to keep from throwing up, warm blood dribbling from his nose and flowing in a steady stream over his lips and down his chin. Everything had been too loud and too bright and too _cold_ , but through the raging cacophony he’d been able to make out Phil’s voice, juxtaposing between gentle, calm words of reassurance and harder, firmer orders to _“hey, hey, stay with me”_ and _“don’t you dare fall asleep before we’ve debriefed, Barton”_.

He blinked heavy, itching eyelids open and tried to focus for a moment, to take stock of his physical well-being. Breathing was fine, no pain or crackles when he sucked in a deep, slow breath; his a hands and feet still had their full range of motion and sensation; all his teeth were still there; both eyes were working just fine. Hell, he didn’t even need to pee. Awesome. Usually when he woke up in sickbay, he felt like death. This made a pleasant change.

“Good evening, Agent Barton.”

The voice was unfamiliar, which immediately put Clint on edge, head jerking sharply to the left as his muscles tensed, ready to defend himself if the need arose. A man sat in the chair at his bedside, dressed in a black waistcoat and pants, the high collar of his white shirt gleaming bright against olive skin and his red cape fastened at his throat by a large brooch designed to look like a giant, glassy eye. It was the trinket that Clint recognised first, rather than the sorcerer’s face.

“Forgive me, it wasn’t my intention to startle you,” the magic-wielder apologised, raising a hand palm-outwards in a calming gesture. “I come as a friend. A confidant, if you will. My name is-”

“Doctor Strange,” Clint finished, his voice a little hoarse from lack of use. “I know. We’ve met before.”

“Indeed we have.” The sorcerer’s lips curled into an easy smile, something quiet and calm and entirely unlike the egotistical bastard that Clint had previously been forced to work with. “Eight years ago, I believe. And as I recall, we didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye at the time.”

Clint narrowed his eyes at the man. “You threatened to turn me into a goat.”

“You tried to shoot me,” Strange replied evenly.

The archer scoffed. “I wasn’t trying to shoot you. If I’d been trying to shoot you, you would’ve been shot. The arrow was off by at least three inches.”

The sorcerer’s smile curled wider. “Perhaps so. But I was younger back then; less experienced. And you seemed to take a great deal of pleasure in antagonising me.”

“You were a pretty easy target,” Clint acknowledged, shifting a little to brace his hands on the mattress and push himself upright, closing his eyes against the sudden wave of dizziness that hit him.

“Slowly now,” Strange cautioned, leaning forwards to activate the controls on the side of the bed, raising the head up to a forty-five degree angle and supporting Clint with a gentle hand on his shoulder as he rearranged the pillows behind him. “You just hitchhiked through a temporal corridor; your body needs time to recover.”

“Temporal corridor?” Clint echoed as he leaned back against the pillows, fighting the urge to vomit. “So you…you know what’s been happening to me?”

Strange nodded, turning to the bedside table where a pitcher of water and a cup stood waiting. “I’ve spent the better part of the past five months trying to find you,” he disclosed. “Between that and patching up inter-dimensional fissures, you’ve kept me rather busy, Hawkeye.”

“Fissures?”

“Messy business, time travel. Even if you manage to pull off a fairly uneventful jump, the initial shockwave always causes significant damage.” The doctor gave him another grim smile and offered him the plastic cup. “Learned that the hard way a few decades ago. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for power-hungry fools who mess with time deliberately, but I do what I can for victims such as yourself who become ensnared against their will.”

Clint reached for the proffered water gratefully, wincing when something pinched at the back of his hand. There was an intravenous cannula taped to the skin there, likely a contributing factor as to why nothing else hurt at present (SHIELD medics knew that it was best to give an agent drugs and fluids _before_ they woke up and became difficult), and he had to clench his other hand into a fist in order to resist the urge to yank it out. He wasn’t a big fan of leaving tubes sitting in him, but having them replaced by exasperated medical staff was far worse.

“Then it was you who brought me back this time?” he guessed, taking a cautious sip, all too aware of the way his stomach continued to churn threateningly.

The doctor tilted his head to one side. “What makes you say that?”

“Phil said the team had been trying to contact you.” Clint pressed the side of the cup against his burning brow and closed his eyes again, the room spinning. “And since I only skipped ahead eight days this time instead of five goddamn months, I figured somebody must’ve intervened. But judging by your expression, I’m guessing it wasn’t you, huh, Doc?”

“Please, call me Stephen,” Strange corrected, reclaiming his seat. “And regrettably, no; during your absence I have endeavoured to locate your consciousness between both co-existing and isolated dimensions, but all my previous attempts to date have been unsuccessful. Your swift return caught us all by surprise. I have several theories regarding temporal phasing, but nothing concrete. It’ll be easier, now that you’re here. Up until now, we’ve been trying to solve the puzzle with only half the pieces.”

Clint blinked, lowering the cup to frown at him. “Sorry. You’re talking about time travel and alternate dimensions like I’m supposed to know what the hell any of this shit means. If you want me to follow along, I’m gonna need the _‘Sorcery for Dummies’_ version, okay?”

Stephen smiled again but shook his head. “There is much to discuss, but it can wait. I’ve kept you from your team long enough.”

That was a good point, and Clint couldn’t fathom how his fuzzy head hadn’t picked up on it before. He’d never woken up alone in sickbay, not since his early months as a SHIELD agent before he’d found Tasha, before Coulson had taken him under his wing. After that, his handler had always been there, sitting at a respectful distance and calmly filling out mission reports, his presence allowing Clint to lower his guard, safe in the knowledge that someone had his back. Even years later, when _handler_ had become _partner_ , the only element of their routine that had changed had been the proximity of Phil’s chair to Clint’s bedside. And then the Chitauri invasion had happened and fate had tossed him a care package of superhero misfits. Waking up alone wasn’t an option anymore, not now that _team_ had become _family._

It suddenly occurred to him that the silence in the room was more than just unusual – it was _unnatural._ He’d been awake for a significant length of time, but he had yet to see a single member of medical staff. Clint took a good look at his surroundings for the first time since his unpleasant return to consciousness, and felt a trickle of unease work its way down into the pit of his stomach again. The four-bedded bay was dimly lit, the adjoining observation room deserted, coffee mugs abandoned on the nurse’s station that was visible through the glass partition. And it was quiet. So _fucking_ quiet. Hell, he couldn’t even hear the familiar whir of the air conditioning.

“Where the hell is everybody?” he asked, his voice low and carefully controlled.

“They’re here,” Stephen answered, standing up again and brushing invisible lint off his dark waistcoat. “They’ve been waiting for you to wake up.”

Blood turned to ice in Clint’s veins, because that sounded ominous as fuck. “What do you mean they’re _here?_ Where?”

The sorcerer raised his hand again in reassurance. “Don’t be alarmed, my friend. Everything is perfectly alright. I merely erected a…a _barrier_ between us, if you will. I needed to speak with you alone, and such an opportunity would not have presented itself without prior intervention. Your husband is very attentive, Agent Barton.”

“Partner,” Clint corrected quietly, even though it was a lie. “We’re not married.”

Stephen smiled at him again, with a knowing sort of look that Clint found unsettling, because he could count the total number of people who knew about the specifics of their relationship on one hand (including both himself and Phil), and Strange’s name had never been on that list before.

“Of course, my mistake.”

“And I don’t understand what the hell you mean by a ‘barrier’, either,” the archer continued, his voice hardening, fingers gripping the plastic cup hard enough to make it tremble, threatening to spill the water all over his blankets. “What did you do to my team? Where are they?”

The sorcerer sighed quietly, but the look in his eyes was sympathetic rather than frustrated as he carefully pried the cup from Clint’s grasp and set it to one side.

“I understand your reservations, Clint, in light of your recent ordeal. But I can assure you, I’m here as an ally. I’d never let any harm come to you _or_ to your team, not if I could help it – and I certainly wouldn’t be the instigator. They’re all quite safe, you have my word.” He straightened with another soft smile, although this one bore a hint of Tony-like smugness that Clint was more accustomed to. “Allow me to demonstrate.”

He turned to one side so that he was facing the rest of the medical bay, lifting a cupped hand to his lips and murmuring something in an unrecognisable language, before blowing softly. Clint wasn’t entirely sure _what_ he was blowing, because the man’s hand appeared to be empty, but suddenly the air around them began shimmering, flickering, and just like that they weren’t alone any more.

Phil was sitting in a chair on the opposite side to where Stephen had been perched (the sorcerer’s chair had mysteriously disappeared while Clint’s attention had been directed elsewhere), his suit jacket hanging over the back, shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows and his tie slightly askew. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Fatigue sat heavy in the slump of his shoulders, weariness written in the lines on his forehead and the dark half-circles beneath his eyes. He was awake, but his attention was fixed on the half-full cup of coffee that he was nursing, thumb stroking idly over the white ceramic as he cradled it between his knees.

Clint reached for him, but suddenly there were _wires;_ intravenous lines and monitoring electrodes emerging from beneath his standard-issue sickbay pyjama shirt. He shot a startled look towards Stephen, who gave him another eerily calm smile in return.

“Peter mentioned something about a shared dislike of medical equipment,” he explained, nodding towards a bed on the opposite side of the dimly lit bay, and Clint recognised the tangle of blankets and gangly limbs immediately. Nobody else slept like that. _Nobody._ The kid had issues.

“So you, what? Made ‘em vanish temporarily?” Clint had to admit, he was impressed. And growing increasingly more confident that Strange might actually be able to fix his impromptu-time-travelling problem.

Stephen inclined his head. “In a manner of speaking, yes. It was merely a more concentrated form of the barrier I erected around your bed. You were unable to see the wires because I didn’t _want_ you to see them. And similarly, for the past fifteen minutes, any individual who chose to look this way would simply have witnessed you laying here with your eyes closed. Parlour tricks, of course, but even basic spells have their uses.”

Clint was suddenly overwhelmingly grateful that Stephen Strange considered himself an ally rather than their enemy, because if the abilities he was currently demonstrating were considered nothing more than ‘parlour tricks’, he wasn’t too keen on finding himself on the receiving end of the sorcerer’s closing act.

“So I’m guessing this barrier of yours is soundproof, too?” Clint prompted, because Phil was still contemplating his coffee with weary despondency, giving them no indication that he was able to hear their conversation.  

“A necessary precaution, as you might imagine. Interruptions would only have made things more difficult.” The sorcerer reached down to pat his knee through the blankets. “Don’t worry, the barrier will shatter as soon as I’ve departed. We’ll talk again soon, Clint.”

And then he was gone, crossing over to the opposite wall at a leisurely stroll and _walking straight through it._

“Huh,” Clint remarked, eyes wide, and to his left Phil snapped to attention, sloshing coffee all over the floor as the movement jarred him.

“Clint,” he breathed, hurriedly setting the mug aside and leaning forwards to grip the archer’s nearest hand between his own. Phil’s gaze flickered briefly down the length of him, taking in Clint’s upright position, the way the pillows had been carefully arranged behind his back, and the deepening crease in the man’s brow was quickly replaced by a look of dawning comprehension.

“Stephen was here,” he surmised.

“Yeah,” Clint replied, still reeling a little from the encounter, while a voice at the back of his mind dimly wondered how long the sorcerer had been on a first-name basis with his husband, because that was certainly a new development. Although he supposed there had been a dramatic increase in the need for magical consultation while he’d been away. Oh god, Stephen didn’t live at the tower, did he? Clint wasn’t ready to deal with a guy who could walk through solid objects.

“Is he, uh,” he cleared his throat, his gaze flickering back over to the fucking _Platform 9 ¾_ wall. “Is he always like that?”

“He likes to be dramatic,” the agent acknowledged, sounding both amused and resigned, a tone he normally reserved for the likes of Tony. “You get used to it after a few months.”

He started to say something else, but a moment later Clint was accosted by a team of SHIELD medics, which wasn’t entirely unexpected given his present location. He grudgingly submitted to a brief physical examination (because resisting them would only prolong the inevitable), and was quietly grateful that Phil didn’t let go of his hand throughout. Their romantic entanglement was hardly a secret, and being in sickbay had him on edge at the best of times. It was nice to have something to ground him.

Thankfully the CMO in charge of the night team was Jason Miller, who was a decent enough human being (for a doctor), keeping the poking and prodding to a bare minimum before hustling the rest of his team away again with a friendly reminder to hit the call button on Clint’s bedside control if he needed anything.

Exhaling a long sigh of relief when they were finally alone again, Clint rolled his head to the side and fixed his partner with a tired grin. “Hi, by the way.”

Phil’s lips twitched up at the corner as he lifted their joined hands and brushed a kiss against the back of Clint’s fingers. “Hi. How are you feeling?”

Clint took a steadying breath and let it out in a sharp sigh. “A little weirded out by all of this,” he admitted. “But I’m getting there.” He scrubbed his free hand down his face, feeling more than just a half-day’s stubble there. “How long was I out for?”

“About nineteen hours.”

“Jesus.” The archer shot him a wide-eyed look. “You’re kidding me?”

“Clinical exhaustion,” Phil explained grimly. “That last jump drained your batteries; you slipped into a hypoglycaemic coma just after we got you here. You’re fine now,” he added, no doubt seeing Clint’s expression. “Everything stabilised pretty quickly once they’d pumped you full of glucose. But Stephen thought it’d be safer to keep you under while your body worked its way through the worst of the symptoms.”

Running a hand through his hair, Clint shook his head slowly. “I don’t even remember passing out.”

“Considering the strain you put yourself under, that’s not surprising,” Phil acknowledged quietly. “Travelling through time without the necessary equipment is no joyride, or so I’ve been led to believe.”

“Pfft,” Clint dismissed, eyes sliding closed again briefly, because it was warm and he was comfortable and there were probably still drugs in his system. “All lies. It’s a walk in the park.” Feeling Phil’s fingers curl a little tighter around his hand, he returned the squeeze with equal strength. “Hey. I’m fine, Boss.”

He wasn’t, of course, but acknowledging his own private concerns would be counterproductive. Bruce and Tony had already sussed out that his time-jumping-slash-energy-fluctuating powers were somehow tied to extreme emotional responses, and if he allowed himself to dwell on the fact that he’d been thrown unexpectedly into the future _twice_ now, he’d start freaking the fuck out. And the last thing he wanted to do was trigger another episode. Given how drained he was feeling after his most recent jump, he wasn’t sure his body could manage a third one. It might have been five and a half months for everyone else, but for Clint this whole ordeal had occurred within a forty-eight hour window. He was fucking _exhausted._

“Is everyone else okay?” he asked after a beat, prying his eyelids open again. And it was a real struggle this time, because fatigue had crept up on him again unawares, adding leaden weights to his limbs. “The team? They’re alright?” 

“Everyone’s fine,” Phil promised, extracting one of his hands to hit the button on the bedside controls, lowering the head of the bed again. “Steve was here a few minutes ago – he went to check up on Banner and Stark, they’re analysing the stone down in lockup. Parker finally passed out just before you came to; kid hasn’t slept much this past week, but he refused to leave. Steve and I practically had to wrestle him into that goddamn bed.”

The senior agent probably hadn’t intended that last bit to come across as fond, but it did; Clint knew him well enough to hear the warmth that belied his otherwise gruff tone. It made him smile. Despite all his protests to the contrary – his unwavering mask of stoicism in the face of those who didn’t know the real Agent Coulson, his impeccable state of dress, his unflappable nature that had earned him the title ‘Agent Cyborg’ among the junior SHIELD employees – Phil was an old softy at heart. Deadly, of course, and capable of killing a man with his pinky; but an old softy nonetheless.

“Where’s Tasha?” he asked, because usually she would have appeared by now to swear at him in Russian and threaten him with bodily harm. It had become a crucial part of his sickbay wake-up routine. Her absence was disconcerting.

Phil tugged the blankets up a little higher, smoothing down the creases carefully. “She’s up on the roof,” he answered shortly. “Thor’s refusing to come inside.”

Clint cracked an eyelid open to frown at him. “What? Why”

His partner sighed, looking grim, the corners of his eyes pinched in a way that only served to make his exhaustion more evident than before.

“He blames himself for triggering your last jump,” Phil explained. “Apparently he’d been attempting to connect with the energy source inside you, to gage whether or not it existed as a living consciousness, but the plan backfired. Stephen thinks the stone felt threatened; that it threw you eight days into the future as a defence mechanism.”

Clint’s brow creased further as he fought to clear his head, memories surfacing slowly as he pushed past the fogginess of his fatigue. He could remember Thor’s hand pressed against his breastbone, remember feeling the warmth of the Asgardian’s broad palm through the thin material of his t-shirt, right before everything went to hell. But Thor hadn’t been the one who’d sent Clint hurtling forwards in time. He’d triggered something else, certainly, but it had been Clint’s own state of building panic that had tipped him over the edge and sent the world spiralling down into chaos.

“It wasn’t like the first time,” he spoke after beat. “I didn’t jump straight away. When Thor touched me, I got…stuck, somehow.”

“Stuck?”

“Everything else froze up,” Clint elaborated. “Like I was trapped there, in that exact moment. For a couple of minutes at least, by my reckoning. Time just _stopped._ But I didn’t feel any different; I could still move and breathe and talk. Things only went to shit when I started freaking out. That’s when I made the jump.”

Phil looked troubled by the news, but that was hardly surprising. It wasn’t every day you found out that your husband was a walking temporal anomaly. Clint summoned enough energy to send his partner another tired, slow smile, squeezing Phil’s fingers again.

“S’fine, Boss,” he mumbled. “Apparently Strange can walk through walls; I’m pretty sure he can handle a big orange rock.”

The other man said nothing, but the lines on his face smoothed over a little as he leaned in closer, brushing a kiss against the corner of Clint’s mouth. Clint desperately wanted to chase the retreating lips with his own, but he was so fucking _tired_ , all he could do was blink sleepily and cling to Phil’s hand a little tighter.

“You should sleep,” he managed after a moment, although his own eyes were already at half-mast.

Phil arched an eyebrow at him. “I don’t think you’re in any position to be giving orders, Clint.”

“You look like hell,” Clint told him bluntly. “I mean you’re _gorgeous_ , don’t get me wrong, but you haven’t looked this run down since that mission in Chechnya. Rough week, huh?”

A muscle in Phil’s jaw ticked, and for a split second the calm façade slipped, revealing an expression of such emotional fragility that Clint felt like he’d been sucker-punched in the gut. His throat constricted, a sympathetic ache building there as the grip on his hand tightened enough to hurt.

“Phil…”

“Don’t.” The older man’s voice was deceptively soft and controlled, but Clint could hear the undercurrent of raw emotion. His grip on the archer’s hand loosened and he lifted the appendage to his lips again, pressing another kiss against Clint’s knuckles by way of an apology. “Not now. Not here.” He took a deep, steadying breath, and suddenly he was Agent Coulson again, all traces of his previous vulnerability gone. “You’re back. That’s all that matters.”

Clint swallowed thickly, but nodded and dropped the subject. When all of this was over and Clint’s time-travelling days were well and truly behind him, there’d be time to address the issue; time to acknowledge the extent of emotional and psychological damage they’d both suffered as a result of this whole fucking mess. In truth, Clint almost felt guilty at how lightly he’d gotten off – sure, he might be stuck with a five-month memory gap, but Phil had been the one forced to endure almost half a year without a trace of him, chasing after false leads and following cold trails, without any real proof that his partner was still alive. Clint had read the mission reports. Phil and the team had been relentless in their search, but after the first month they’d simply run out of evidence. And Tarius, the man responsible for the whole mess, had vanished right along with the stone. SHIELD had even cut some pretty shady deals with unsavoury characters in exchange for information pertaining to the sorcerer’s whereabouts, but none of it had proven useful in the long-run.

Clint couldn’t even begin to imagine what it must have been like. After the Chitauri invasion, during that nightmarish week when he had truly believed that Phil was dead and gone, he’d all but lost his fucking _mind_ out of grief. To live through five months of that…

God, even the thought of it made him feel sick.

The dimmed spotlights above Clint’s bed began to flicker, the screen of the overhead cardiac monitor glitching, and it was only then that he realised the rhythmic pulsing in his ears was the sound of his own heart beating at twice its usual pace.

“Clint.” There was a blur of movement to his left, and suddenly Phil’s hands were cupping his jaw, a weight settling beside Clint’s hip and making the mattress dip as his partner’s face swam into view above him. “Hey, hey, easy. You’re okay.”

The archer closed his eyes against the hot sting of tears that threatened to betray him, one hand coming up to grip Phil’s wrist loosely, and when he opened his mouth it was to choke out a laugh that was wet and broken and half an octave shy of hysterical.

“No I’m not,” he managed, in a voice that wavered traitorously. “This whole thing is fucked up.”

Phil’s forehead pressed against his own, the agent’s breath a warm puff against his lips. “I know,” the older man acknowledged softly, and again, “I know. We’ll figure this out, Clint, I promise.”

Although his eyes were still closed, he could tell by the uniform colour of the inside of his eyelids that the lights had stopped flickering. His heartbeat was slowing again, the adrenaline surge fading, but Clint felt exhausted in the wake of it all. He felt Phil shift back off the mattress again, heard the low murmur of his voice as he spoke to someone nearby – probably the medical team coming in to check that Clint hadn’t up and vanished on their watch – but his mind was struggling to keep up with the conversation, and in the end he stopped trying.

He must have fallen asleep again at some point, because the next time awareness returned, things had changed. The medbay was darker than it had been before, the only source of light coming from the wall-mounted touchscreens dotted around the room, and the cardiac electrodes were missing from his chest. But that wasn’t all.

Someone else was in bed with him.

His muscles barely had the chance to tense up before a sharp elbow was planted in his side, startling the breath out of him.

_“Ublyudok.”_

He pressed a hand to the throbbing ache, but a tired grin was pulling at his lips now, warmth settling in his chest where panic had previously been cloying.

“If you’re here to seduce me, Tasha, you’re gonna have to work on your technique.”

The agent shifted against his side, propping herself up on one elbow to peer down at him in the near-darkness of the medical bay. Her face was calm, impassive, but there was a sharpness to her gaze that cut right through him.

“Is this time travel bullshit going to become a habit of yours?”

“I hope not,” Clint grunted, blinking up at her with fatigue-heavy eyes. “The hangover fucking sucks.” He rolled his head to the side, disappointment settling in his gut at the sight of the empty chair. “Where’s Phil?”

“Fury gave him an ultimatum,” the Russian disclosed blandly. “Voluntary sleep or forced sedation.”

Clint’s lips twitched. “Bet he loved that. Did Phil tell him where he could shove it?”

“Mm.” Natasha’s fingers threaded themselves into Clint’s short hair, a soothing pressure against his scalp. “Luckily Steve intervened before any shots were fired. He managed to persuade Coulson to take five in the isolation room next door. That was three and a half hours ago.”

Shit, had he really been asleep that long? Clint still felt exhausted, like he’d only closed his eyes for a matter of seconds.

“Oh,” Natasha added, “Peter wanted me to tell you that you’re an asshole for regaining consciousness ten minutes after he’d fallen asleep. And I’m supposed to wake him up now that you’re talking.”

Clint remembered the tangled ball of blankets and limbs and felt a pang of guilt. Had their positions been revered, Clint would’ve been pissed off too, but to be fair, if his previous conversation with Phil hadn’t woken the teenager (taking the kid’s super-hearing and Spidey senses into account), then Peter must have been pretty fucking exhausted.

“Let him sleep,” he decided, suppressing a yawn. He could apologise to the kid in the morning. Whenever that was. “What time is it?”

“Just after four. Too early for breakfast.” She flicked his ear gently. “Go back to sleep, _opezdol_.”

“Mmm, Tasha.” Clint’s eyes were already closed, but his lips twitched again at that. “Love it when you talk dirty to me.”

She pushed herself further upright, legs shifting as though she intended to swing them over the side of the bed, and Clint made a noise of protest at the back of his throat, rolling over onto his side and looping an arm around her waist.

“Stay.”

Natasha sighed, but she stopped moving. “These beds aren’t exactly built for two, Clint.”

“Are you calling me _fat?”_ Clint demanded, although it sounded more amused than hurt even to his own ears. “Because technically I haven’t eaten in, like, eight days.”

The Russian tugged on his hair a little more sharply, but Clint knew she was smiling even if he couldn’t see it with his eyes closed. And a moment later she shifted again, this time to settle back down against the mattress, giving no verbal complaint beyond another put-upon sigh when Clint unashamedly wriggled closer. They’d shared smaller beds than this during undercover ops, often on surfaces far less comfortable than the padded mattress of the medical cot, so Clint could hardly say that conditions were cramped. On the contrary; Natasha was a familiar warmth that fit neatly up against his side, and the fact that he could feel at least two concealed weapons on her was comforting. Platonic snuggling just wasn’t the same unless your BFF was packing.

Natasha sighed again, a warm puff of breath against his temple. “You need to talk to Thor.”

“Hnugh?” Clint managed, drawn back from the brink of sleep.

“He thinks you’re going to blame him for what happened in the workshop,” she elaborated. “Strange is pretty sure it won’t happen again as long as he doesn’t actively try to communicate with the stone, but he still won’t come inside. Even Bruce can’t convince him. And the whole hunger-strike thing has everyone worried.”

Clint opened his eyes at that, staring up at the darkened ceiling with a crease in his brow. “He’s not eating?”

“It’s an Asgardian grief thing, apparently.” Natasha sighed again, sharp and frustrated. “Jane said we shouldn’t worry too much, technically he can survive months without food. But he looks like shit, and he’s barely spoken a word to anybody since it happened.” She paused for a moment, then asked, carefully, “You don’t blame him, do you?”

The archer scoffed, nudging her lightly in the stomach. “Of course I don’t. He was only trying to help.” He yawned and shifted closer to her. “I’ll talk to him later.”

“Good.” She stole half his blankets, tossing a leg over both of his and only narrowly avoiding kneeing him in the groin. “Now shut up and go to sleep.”

“Bossy,” Clint grouched, but he obeyed nonetheless.

 

 

 

 

o~O~o

 

 

 

 

The numbers on Tony’s monitor had begun to blur again. He scrubbed a hand down his face and reached for his coffee mug, swearing under his breath when he found it empty. He wasn’t sure how many cups he’d drunk over the past twenty-four hours, but it was definitely well into the double digits by now.

“Sato,” he called, stretching an arm over his head to loosen the crick in his spine, spinning in the chair at his workstation to face the scientist. “You seriously need to invest in bigger mugs if you expect me to-” He blinked, squinted, and then frowned at the broad-shouldered individual who sat at the scientist’s desk. “You’re not Agent Sato.”

 “Not last time I checked,” Steve acknowledged, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

Tony’s eyes narrowed a little further, confused and suspicious. “How long have you been sitting there?”

“About an hour.” Steve pushed himself to his feet, crossing the distance between them in a few slow, leisurely strides. “I did say ‘hi’. You said _“zip it, Mei, I’m thinking”_. Figured it was probably better to let you work.”

“You figured, huh?” He leaned against Steve’s hip when the man settled an arm around his shoulders, blinking down at his empty mug again. “Steve. I need more coffee.”

“No,” Steve corrected gently, “you need to sleep.”

“Meh,” Tony made a dismissive gesture, although it was really more of an arm-flop because fatigue made him uncoordinated and semi-drunk at the best of times. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” A jaw-splitting yawn escaped him, because his body was a traitorous bastard. “Coffee, Steve.”

“Sleep, Tony.” The captain levered him to his feet, despite Tony’s grumbling protests, and wrapped his arms around the shorter man when the mechanic slumped forwards against his chest uncooperatively. “Don’t make me carry you,” he warned. “Because you know I will.”

Tony tried to frown, but it was hard to be pissed off when his face was smushed against Captain America’s left pectoral.

“I hate you.”

“I know.” Steve’s arms squeezed him in a brief, tight hug. “I’m still taking you to bed.”

Tilting his head back, Tony grinned and waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Promises, promises.” At Steve’s unmoved expression, he sighed again and let his head drop forwards against Steve’s unfairly muscular chest. “Baby, I’ve got work to do. And somebody’s gotta watch the stone.”

“Stephen’s already in there. He can handle it.”

“He’s what now?”

Tony’s head snapped to the side, his gaze darting across to look at the surveillance monitor. Strange was, indeed, inside the containment room. He was sitting cross-legged on a red mat about six feet away from the pedestal that currently housed the amber gem, his hands resting on his knees palm-upwards and his eyes closed. Probably in the midst of some sort of magical yoga trance. _Weirdo._

“Strange needs adult supervision,” he insisted stubbornly. “He’s good with all this magic shit, I’ll give him that, but the whole point of monitoring the stone is to understand it better on a _scientific_ level. We need to work out a method of controlling it that doesn’t involve singing it some Voodoo lullaby or doing an interpretive dance.”

Steve sighed, one hand coming up to grasp Tony’s chin lightly and redirect the mechanic’s attention back towards him. “You’ve been holed up in here for almost twenty-four hours now,” he argued gently. “And from what I understand, the stone’s done nothing since it reappeared. Am I right?”

Tony frowned a little but nodded reluctantly. It was true; after vanishing into thin air eight days ago without warning, the Soul Gem had appeared again during the early hours of yesterday morning, at roughly the exact same moment that Clint had shown up at the tower looking half-dead and babbling incoherently. And while the archer’s return hadn’t affected the tower’s energy matrix, the stone had knocked out all power within a two-block radius, sending SHIELD into a panicked frenzy. However, by the time the backup generators had kicked in and rebooted all the primary systems, the stone had rendered itself inactive. Its energy readings were still off the scale, and it was registering on their scans as an ionic compound of _some kind_ , but beyond that they had nothing.

The glowing orange fucker had gone to sleep on them. Again.

“Clint’s stable,” Steve continued, his voice low and persuasive. “And the stone’s in safe hands while Stephen’s here. I even managed to persuade Phil to get some sleep. You can afford to take a break, Tony, even if it’s only for a few hours. Your research will still be here when you get back.”

“You sure about that?” Tony asked, and he was only half joking. They hadn’t exactly had a lot of prior warning before the last disappearance.

Steve sighed, lowering his head a little to brush his lips against Tony’s in a chaste kiss. “Sleep. Please? For me?”

Tony made another noise of protest, but only because he could already feel himself caving. He settled one hand on Steve’s hip, curling the other into the front of the man’s shirt as he tilted his head up a little further to steal another kiss.

“You don’t fight fair, Captain.”

Steve smiled against his mouth. “It’s taken you this long to notice, huh?”

Then he shifted his grip, turning them towards the door and steering Tony out of the surveillance lab. It was still stupid o’clock in the morning, so the lower level corridors were mostly deserted, and the handful of agents that they did encounter were discreet enough not to stare when they saw Captain America manhandling Iron Man towards the medical wing.

“Is everyone here?” he asked when the elevator deposited them on the correct floor.

“Everyone except Thor,” Steve whispered, as they shuffled past the occupied staff room towards the four-bedded bay that the Avengers had clearly appropriated for the night. The captain waved away the squad of agents who stood guard outside, hustling Tony through the automatic doors. “And Phil’s in the isolation room next door. He didn’t want Fury’s yelling to disturb Clint.”

Tony squinted through the semi-darkness, his eyes adjusting to the dim lighting quickly, and something tight finally uncurled in his chest when he spotted the archer, fast asleep on his side with his face pressed against Natasha’s stomach. The Russian assassin caught his gaze and lifted a finger to her lips, somehow managing to make the gesture look threatening despite the fact that Clint was curled around her like a cat.

In the opposite bed, Peter lay at an impossible angle, the blankets wrapped around him haphazardly, arms and legs sticking out all over his place. The angle of his neck looked painful, and Tony gave a sympathetic wince for the crick the teenager was going to have when he woke up. Well, probably. To be fair, Peter’s musculoskeletal design had been genetically altered to allow for increased flexibility, so maybe the kid was comfortable like that.

He heard Steve huff a soft, breathy laugh, and glanced sideways to find the captain’s gaze directed towards the snoozing teenager, warmth and fondness in his expression. Tony slipped his phone out of his pocket and offered it to the blond.

“You could always snap a picture,” he suggested, careful to keep his voice to a low whisper.

Steve sent him an admonishing look, but his amusement was clear. “Get into bed, Tony.”

The mechanic gave him a sloppy salute, grinning, and stumbled his way over to the last empty bed in the bay, tucked away in the far left-hand corner opposite Bruce’s. The physicist had fallen asleep sitting upright, a Starkpad resting against his chest, his glasses sitting low on his nose. It was a familiar sight. They’d pulled all-nighters and three-day-science-benders often enough to have seen each other in every state of semi-consciousness known to man. Compared to how Bruce usually fell asleep in the lab – slumped over his workstation with his cheek pillowed on a stack of blueprints – his current position almost looked comfortable.

Kicking off his shoes, Tony crawled into bed, scooting over to the far side so that his back was pressed against the rail, leaving enough room for a genetically engineered super-soldier to bunk with him. Although Steve seemed to have gotten himself waylaid trying to untangle Peter’s limbs from the blankets.

As Tony watched, the teenager jerked awake, shooting upright with a gasp that sounded overly loud in the silence of the room. Steve caught him by the shoulders, whispering something to him in a voice too quiet for Tony to overhear, but the mechanic saw Peter’s gaze drift over to the opposite side of the room where Clint still slumbered, undisturbed. Natasha lifted the hand that wasn’t in Clint’s hair and made the same shushing gesture as before, although it was markedly less threatening this time.

Rather than allowing Steve to steer him back down onto the pillows, however, Peter unfolded easily from the mattress and slipped out of the captain’s grasp, turning towards the door. Steve stood alongside him, gently snagging hold of his wrist, but after a short whispered conversation, he let the teenager go. Tony frowned, pushing himself upright as Steve made his way across the darkened medical bay towards him.

“Where’s he running off to?” he asked, as Steve bent down to collect Tony’s discarded shoes and tuck them neatly under the end of the bed.

“He’s gone to find Thor. Said he needed some air.” Steve settled down on the mattress beside him with a long, weary sigh. “He’ll be alright.”

“Kid’s a walking disaster,” Tony argued, still whispering. “You really think setting him loose on a SHIELD base is a good idea?”

Steve paused beside him, then shook his head and tugged Tony closer to his side. “He’s sensible enough stay out of trouble for a few hours. And besides, Fury won’t let him access anything dangerous. You know he watches Peter like a hawk.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“Yes.” The soldier dropped a kiss against his hairline. “He’ll be fine, Tony. Let him be alone for a little while, if that’s what he wants.”

Tony huffed, but dropped the argument. Steve was right, the kid wasn’t stupid. Unlucky as fuck and prone to unintentionally causing minor disasters, sure, but he was pretty sensible, for a teenager. Most of Tony’s inhibitions stemmed from his own doubts about SHIELD. When an organisation whose secrets had secrets failed to notice when a fucking Hydra cell was growing right in at the top of the circus, that’s when you started worrying about their ability to maintain national security. Sure, they’d successfully uncovered Hydra’s plan before it had gone into full swing, systematically flushing out every double agent who cropped up out of the woodwork, but the Avengers had decided then and there that they’d be functioning as an independent unit, rather than working under SHIELD’s direction. And sure, SHIELD had rebuilt itself admirably since then, but Tony’s doubts had remained unchanged. He trusted Fury and Hill and Coulson (although Phil worked as part of their unit now rather than being under SHIELD’s thumb), but that was about as far as it went.

He didn’t like the idea of them leaving the stone unattended, either. There was a team of level-seven agents posted in the corridor outside the surveillance lab, but what good would they do if shit hit the fan? Fuck load of nothing, that’s what. And sure, Strange was down there and he probably had the wherewithal to contain any unexpected magic-related crises that arose, but it still felt like they were trying to contain a Bengal tiger in a paddling pool.

“You’re thinking too much,” Steve whispered, his arm curling tighter around Tony’s waist. “Stop it. Go to sleep.”

Settling his head on Steve’s shoulder, the mechanic sighed and closed his eyes. But try as he might, he couldn’t keep his thoughts from returning to the artefact in lockup two floors below them, or shake the unsettling feeling that the Soul Gem wasn’t done fucking things up.

 

 

 

 

 

o~O~o

 

 

 

 

“Seriously, dude,” Clint said again around a mouthful of sugary calories, “apology accepted. Not that it was necessary in the first place, because none of this was your fault, but I appreciate the sentiment.”

Thor smiled, although it was notably less cheerful than usual, and swallowed the last bite of his cheesecake. “It was the least I could do, my friend. I’m only glad to find you in such good health.”

Pulling a face, Peter shook his head as he watched the archer. “I can’t believe you’re actually eating that stuff. I’m pretty sure it’s radioactive.”

Clint used the bowl of his plastic spoon to neatly flick a glob of luminescent-blue jello at the teenager, grinning when the kid’s heightened reflexes catapulted him into a one-armed handstand with a yelp, rather than just taking the hit like any sane person would do.

“You really don’t like jello, huh?” the archer remarked, scraping up the last dregs from the plastic cup.

Peter regained his perch on the end of the bed with as much dignity as he could muster, ignoring Clint’s smirk and Thor’s hearty laugh. “I have a thing against eating unnatural foods.”

Clint chucked him a vanilla pudding cup from the stack sitting on the table in front of him. “You better not have anything against pudding,” he warned, “or we’re gonna come to blows, Parker.”

“Nope, pudding’s good.” Peter grinned and ripped off the foil lid with gusto.

Clint tossed an unwrapped brownie towards Thor. “Where’d you guys pilfer all this from, anyway?”

“A magician never reveals his secrets,” Peter snarked, then choked on his pudding and shot Clint a wide-eyed look. “Sorry. I didn’t mean-”

The archer grinned and waved away his concern. “Kid, _relax._ I’m not gonna have a nervous breakdown if somebody says ‘Abracadabra’.”

Actually, he wasn’t going to have a nervous breakdown _at all._ Sleep had helped to restore his sense of equilibrium, and that horrible state of fragility he’d experienced last night was a thing of the past. He was fine. He was alive. He was _calm._ Doctor Strange would figure out a way to switch off his newfound Voodoo powers, and then things could finally go back to the way they had always been.

“Anyway, enough about me,” he dismissed, reaching for another pot of jello and ignoring Peter’s renewed grimace. “I’ve been gone eight days. Tell me what I’ve missed.”

Peter shrugged, stirring his pudding slowly. “Nothing much, actually. Which is _weird._ It was like all the bad guys decided to stay indoors this week.”

“Hey,” Clint nodded towards the kid’s arm, “you got your cast off. Everything healed up okay?”

That finally coaxed a smile out of the teenager. “Yeah, never better. I’m back on active duty, so that’s a bonus. I’ve been going stir crazy stuck in the tower all the time.”

“You required rest while your wounds mended,” Thor reminded him, clapping Peter on the back hard enough to jerk him forward a little. “There is no shame in that.”

“I wasn’t ashamed,” Peter grouched, setting his pudding aside so that he could rotate his shoulder with a wince. “I was just _bored_ out of my skull.”

Clint snorted and shook his head. “I don’t know how the hell you could get bored, kid. You’ve got an indoor skate park with inbuilt holographic projectors. And a _dog._ ”

Peter stuck his tongue out at him, because clearly he’d matured significantly during Clint’s absence. “Shut up. It’s called cabin fever. Besides, Cap and Tony revoked my skate park privileges while I had the cast on, even though I _said_ I wasn’t gonna use the ramps.”

“Geez, kid,” Clint drawled sardonically, grinning, “it’s like they don’t trust you.”

“But Sully was a loyal companion during your confinement, was he not?” Thor spoke, likely surmising by the look on Peter’s face that the teenager was about ten seconds from throwing his pudding at the archer.

“Yeah, that’s true,” Peter acknowledged, then uncrossed his legs so that he could kick Clint in the knee lightly. “Although it took me two days to drag him up out of the workshop after you disappeared. Confused the fuck out of him. You owe him a walk, dude.”

Clint raised a hand in surrender. “Hey, no skin off my back, I love dogs. I’ll be more than happy to oblige, as soon as they let me outta here.”

“That better not be what you’re having for breakfast.”

“Jealous, Cap?” Clint asked around a mouthful of jello, shooting the taller blond a grin as Steve crossed the room towards them.

“That isn’t exactly the word I’d use, no.” Steve came to a halt at the foot of the bed, settling his hands on Peter’s shoulders as he levelled Clint with an assessing look. “How are you holding up, soldier?”

Clint gestured to the selection of desserts scattered across his table. “Fucking _starved._ ”

“I can see that.”

“Shut up and eat a pudding, Rogers,” the archer griped, tossing a caramel cup at his head, which the captain caught neatly.

Peter craned his head around to glance back at him. “You guys were gone when Thor and I got back. Did something happen down in the labs?”

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Steve replied calmly.

The teenager’s brow creased. “Oookay. Now I’m officially worried.”

The captain shook his head and managed an easy smile. “Peter, it’s nothing. Doctor Strange just wanted to talk to us.”

“About what?” Clint piped up, setting his dessert aside and fixing the taller blond with a steady look.

“He has a theory about what’s been happening to you,” Phil answered from the doorway, a manila folder tucked under one arm and a brown paper bag held in the other. He looked entirely unruffled compared to his appearance last night, not a single crease to be seen in his pristine suit, his expression calm and relaxed, and the tension in his posture gone. He met Clint’s gaze and smiled. “Morning.”

Clint felt an answering grin curl at his lips. “Hey. Want some pudding?”

Phil arched an eyebrow at the selection of cups and dessert boxes piled high on Clint’s table, crossing the room and dropping the paper bag unceremoniously into the archer’s lap.

“No, thank you. I got one of the junior agents to do a bagel run.” He smiled his thanks at Thor when the Asgardian pulled up a chair for him. “You all need to eat something.”

“We have _pudding_ , Phil.”

“I meant real food, Barton.” Phil opened the bag for him and tossed a wrapped package towards Peter, whose impeccable reflexes kept it from sailing over his head. He handed another to Thor, and a third to Steve. “There’s a fresh pot of coffee in the rec. room down the hallway, if you guys want to get some.”

The others seemed to take this as the dismissal that it was (albeit a subtle one, because Phil was sneaky like that), and within thirty seconds Clint and Phil were alone in the room again.

Ignoring the bagel bag (even though it smelt _delicious)_ , Clint pushed the rolling table aside with one hand and reached for Phil with the other, snagging him by the end of his tie and tugging until his partner obligingly bent down for a kiss. It was deeper and less vulnerable than the kisses they’d shared last night, and Clint felt something inside him solidify at the confident brush of lips against his own. They were fine. They were okay. This time-travelling bullshit hadn’t ruined anything.

Phil broke the kiss after a moment, chuckling softly against his lips. “You taste like jello.”

“I’m sure I’ve tasted of worse things,” Clint murmured back.

“True.” Another kiss. “But not this early in the morning. Eat your bagel.”

Clint sighed as his partner pulled away, but obediently unwrapped the warm sandwich, grinning when he spotted bacon _and_ eggs peeking out of the sides.

“I knew you loved me, sir.”

“On occasion,” Phil allowed, sitting back in his chair and opening the manila folder.

Taking a bite, Clint attempted to unobtrusively read the contents of the folder upside-down, but gave up when he realised it was mostly analytical data and printed spectrographs.

“Kinda heavy reading for this time in the morning, isn’t it?” he quipped, pouring himself another glass of water.

“It’s the preliminary reports on the artefact,” Phil told him calmly. “Every piece of data we’ve collected about the stone over the past five months.”

Clint eyed the slim folder critically. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Boss, but there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot in there.”

“You’re not wrong,” his partner acknowledged, and nudged a few stray empty pudding pots from Clint’s lap space so that he could slide the folder across to rest in the concave of the archer’s crossed legs. “We’ve been having difficulty interpreting the test results – and that’s when we’ve managed to scavenge any readings at all. Some of our equipment isn’t even registering the stone’s presence. Stephen thinks it might have something to do with the artefact’s origin.”

“You mean the fact that it’s from another dimension?” Clint guessed, because he’d sussed out that much by himself after his conversation with Strange last night.

Phil gave him a quietly assessing look, before his lips twitched up again. “How about I tell you what I know, you tell me what _you_ know, and we’ll hopefully meet halfway between the two?”

Clint grinned around another bite, chewing and swallowing quickly as he nudged the open file back over to Phil. “Sounds like a plan, Boss-man. Age before beauty.”

Phil whacked him lightly over the head with the folder, but he was laughing as he did it, so everything was fine.

 

 

 

o~O~o

 

 

 

“I’m not sure this is such a good idea,” Tony said for perhaps the fifth time, eyeing the glowing artefact warily. “I thought we were supposed to be leaving the goddamn thing alone?”

“That didn’t exactly turn out so well the first time, did it?” Clint pointed out, although he kept his back pressed against the wall of the observation room as the scientists wheeled the stone in. “We can’t just sit around waiting for the fireworks to go off. And if there’s a way to fix this problem, I’d like it done sooner rather than later.”

“We’re taking all the necessary precautions,” Strange added, glancing up from the odd semi-circular design he was sketching on the floor with chalk. Agent Sato was watching him from the sidelines, the corner of her eye twitching every time another squiggle was drawn on the floor of her lab. “If I do this right, the stone won’t even sense my consciousness.”

He stood, dusting off his hands, and moved to position the mobile pedestal a little closer to his drawing, standing between the two of them and holding both arms out to the side. He apparently found the measurement acceptable, because the next moment he was extending a hand towards Clint.

“Come. It’s time.”

Narrowly avoiding rolling his eyes at the unnecessarily dramatic statement, Clint nevertheless abandoned the relative safety of the wall and stepped over the barrier that had been sketched into the floor in chalky runes, shivering when a tingling sensation ran up and down his limbs. Stephen took him by the hand once he was near enough, tugging the archer’s arm out in front of him, before fastening something soft and cool around his wrist.

“What’s that?” Clint asked, suppressing the urge to yank his wrist back, because Stephen hadn’t mentioned anything about funky Voodoo bracelets.

“An anchor,” the older man replied distractedly, taking Clint by the shoulders and manoeuvring him to stand in the centre of his concentrated chalk-drawn squiggles. “Something to bind you here in case the Soul Stone tries to escape again.”

Out of the corner of his eyes, Clint saw Tony lean in closer, although he didn’t cross the barrier that Strange had put in place. “What’s it made out of?”

“The elements of existence,” the sorcerer answered cryptically.

Tony sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. “Awesome. Anything more specific than that?”

Stephen glanced across at him briefly, arching his eyebrows. “Would you like me to draw you a diagram, Stark?” He shook his head and gestured absently towards Clint’s wrist. “It’s a binding charm comprised of earth, metal, water and flesh.”

“Ew,” Peter remarked, and Clint snorted, although he secretly shared the sentiment.

That being said, the bracelet didn’t look half bad. It was no thicker than his little finger, a smooth polished silver on the outside with a soft lining on the inside that seemed to be some kind of animal hide, and there were two glass-like beads soldered into the middle of the band, one clear and the other light brow. Water and earth, apparently.

“But it’s safe, right?” Steve pressed, standing directly opposite Clint against the far wall next to Phil, where the archer could easily see them both. “He’s not in any danger?”

“In all things, there is an element of risk,” Strange admitted, dabbing a dark red substance in a swirling pattern over the back of his hands (Clint really, _really_ hoped it was just poster paint). “But I’ve done my best to safeguard the ritual.” He met Clint’s gaze, his expression calm and patient. “You do, of course, have the option to discontinue at any given time. You need only say the word.”

Clint took a steadying breath and shook his head, squaring his shoulders. “No. We all need answers, and I’m sick of guessing.” He gave Strange a brisk nod. “Do it.”

“As you wish.”

A hush settled over the room as Stephen moved to stand sideways between Clint and the stone. Closing his eyes, the sorcerer raised a hand towards Clint, resting it against his breastbone as Thor had done previously. Seconds ticked by, and Clint’s gaze flickered rapidly from one team member to another, reassuring himself that time hadn’t frozen, that everyone else was still breathing and blinking. His eyes finally returned to meet Phil’s, who held his gaze unwaveringly and offered him a slow, shallow nod of support. Then further movement from the sorcerer caught his attention again and he watched as Stephen raised his other arm, extending it slowly towards the pedestal.

He held his hand above the stone, fingers curving to match the shape of it but not quite touching. They trembled a little as the man inhaled deeply, and a sudden static-like sensation filled the air. Clint didn’t quite know how to put it into words, but suddenly Stephen felt _bigger_ ; more powerful. Dangerous, even.

The others clearly sensed it too. Peter’s grip on the edge of the worktop had turned his knuckles white, and Bruce’s hands were flexing in a familiar nervous gesture designed to relieve the stretch of too-tight skin over swelling bones, his breathing pattern deep and even in a way that suggested the doctor had deliberately reverted to using a specific technique that would lower his heart rate. Natasha shifted her stance and uncrossed her arms, one hand settling unobtrusively on Bruce’s elbow and the other falling to her side where Clint knew she undoubtedly kept a weapon concealed. Behind her, Thor’s pleasant countenance had dimmed, his brow furrowing as his gaze flickered between Stephen and the stone

Yeah. That wasn’t worrying at _all._

It felt as though Clint was left standing there for hours, listening to the steady pulse of his own heartbeat, his wrist feeling hot and sweaty where the bracelet still hugged his skin tightly. None of them dared to shatter the silence, but the tension in the room seemed to be growing by the second, and Clint didn’t know how much more of this he could take.

Suddenly, with a shuddering gasp as though he hadn’t drawn breath since the ritual began, Strange abruptly dropped his hand again and staggered back away from the stone. He braced a hand against the nearest workstation for balance, his olive skin a shade paler than before, and Clint watched as Steve started forwards with a creased brow, although he didn’t step beyond the chalk barrier.

“Doctor? Are you-?”

Stephen held up a hand to forestall his concerns, flashing them all a brief, somewhat strained smile. “Yes, yes. Quite alright.”

“So?” Tony demanded after a beat, impatience acting as a smooth mask for the anxiety everyone knew he was dealing with. “Anything? Nothing?”

The sorcerer heaved a long, shaky sigh, then visibly straightened. “I’m afraid I underestimated the gem’s abilities rather drastically.” He ran a hand through his dark hair and cleared his throat. “This is no mere Soul Stone. It’s one of the Gatekeeper’s gems.”

“By Asgard,” Thor breathed, and his tone worried Clint, because he’d never heard the prince sound so genuinely _stunned_ before. “The lost Infinity Stone?”

Stephen inclined his head. “So it seems. I hadn’t sensed its full potential, not with half its power stored within Hawkeye’s consciousness. But it explains his ability to leap through time.”

“Uh, no,” Peter interrupted, glancing between them. “No it doesn’t. That doesn’t actually explain anything at all. What the hell is going on?”

Clint gestured towards the teenager. “What he said.”

The sorcerer sighed again, but it sounded more weary than frustrated. “This stone belongs to a sorcerer far greater than myself; an entity who has existed for countless millennia, but not in our dimension. He was the first to wield this stone, and with it he built the temporal corridors that exist between worlds. _That_ is the stone’s primary function – to control and manipulate the flow of time.”

“So is that why it’s been tossing me into the future?” Clint asked. “Because nobody’s controlling it now that Tarius is dead?”

 Stephen shook his head. “I don’t know how Tarius came upon the stone,” he spoke, “but I can only assume that it slipped through a fissure between dimensions and sought out the nearest magic-sensitive soul it could find. Tarius was no great sorcerer – that’s why he and his followers had previously posed no threat to humanity. But he knew enough about magic to somehow feed off the stone’s power, using it for his own purposes without fully understanding that it was a living consciousness in its own right.”

He approached Clint again, tapping two fingers against his breastbone. “It latched itself onto you as a means of escape, Agent Barton; knowing that by doing so it would sever its connection with Tarius. But a bond once made is not easily undone. To put it in layman’s terms – the Infinity Stone is stuck.”

Clint blinked. Frowned. Blinked again.

“Stuck?”

“It’s been trying to return to the temporal corridor,” Stephen explained. “Where it belongs. But there’s enough of its consciousness trapped inside you that every jump drags you along with it. It’s like someone’s strapped a buoyancy aid to a fish. It might be able to submerge itself for a short while, but eventually it’s dragged back to the surface again.”

Clint wasn’t sure how he felt about being compared to a flotation device. Admittedly, it was probably kinder than being called a fish.

“So how do we get him unstuck?” Tony prompted, arms still crossed over his chest as he eyed the stone warily.

Stephen paused, sighed again, and turned his gaze back towards the stone. During the growing silence, the feeling of dread in Clint’s stomach solidified, a weary sort of resignation settling over him.

“You can’t sever the connection, can you?”

The sorcerer glanced his way, his expression grim. “I’m afraid not. I can do my best to keep you tethered to this dimension, and to keep the stone in a state of rest, but I don’t have the power or the knowledge to cut the bond that exists between you. At least not without killing you.”

“Right.” Clint nodded. Swallowed. Tried to ignore the rushing sound in his ears. “Okay.”

“I have contacts,” Stephen added hastily, putting a reassuring hand on Clint’s shoulder as he steered him over towards the edge of the barrier. “In other realms. Sorcerers who’ve been around for centuries. I’ll do everything I can to find a solution to your dilemma, Clint, you have my word.”

Managing to spare the magic-wielder a forced smile, Clint stepped across the chalk line, shivering when a wave of chills ran down his spine. He allowed himself to be pulled into the welcoming safety of Phil’s arms, feeling Steve’s hand settle on the back of his neck.

“Can we go home?” he asked after a beat, relieved that his voice came out steady and strong.

Steve turned towards Strange, who looked a little lost standing alone in the centre of his chalk circle. “Doctor? Is it safe to take him back to the tower?”

Strange nodded slowly. “The anchor I gave him should prevent another incident in the immediate future. And putting a little distance between himself and the stone is probably wise. But,” and here the doctor’s countenance became grave again, “if he becomes unwell in any way, you must contact me at _once_. The stone may attempt to leave this dimension without him, and that…” He took a deep breath and straightened. “We don’t want that to happen.”

Clint didn’t even want to ask why. He could make an educated guess. It probably involved a lot of pain. And death.

“Happy’s gonna meet us up front in fifteen,” Tony said, breaking the tense silence as he shoved his cell phone back into his pocket. “Jarvis is making our usual pizza order as we speak, we can pick it up on the way back to the tower.” His gaze flickered over to meet Clint’s, his smile too wide and too cheerful but _exactly_ what the archer needed. “Who’s up for a movie marathon?”

“Fuck yeah,” Clint agreed. Honestly, right now, he could’ve kissed Stark.

“I’m thinking classic 90’s sci-fi,” Tony continued, interlocking his fingers with Steve’s and leading the way to the exit at a confident swagger. “Maybe a couple of Monty Python’s thrown in, just to spice things up.”

“Sounds good,” Bruce concurred, and if his voice was a touch hoarser than normal, no one mentioned it.

“I particularly enjoy the one about the quest for the religious artefact,” Thor mentioned, wrapping an arm around Peter’s shoulders and steering the unusually quiet teen after the scientists. “‘Tis utter folly, but humorous nonetheless.”

Clint watched them go, walking at the back at a slower pace, Phil’s hand a solid point of contact against his lower back. There was a helluva lot he still had to deal with, but right now he didn’t want to process any of it. He wanted to go home, curl up on the couch with his team and eat junk food while they wasted half a day in front of the TV. He wanted to forget about magical stones and temporal corridors and power-hungry sorcerers, even if it was just for the night. He’d been forced to process too much already.

“I’m okay,” he said, when he felt Phil’s gaze lingering on him a little too long. “Really. We wanted answers, right?”

Phil’s fingers curled against his own, squeezing gently. “Right.”

Clint found solace in the strength of his hold and took a steadying breath. Then another. And frowned.

“Phil?”

“Mm?”

“Are Steve and Tony _holding hands?”_

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Believe it or not, that end scene with Strange performing the ritual was actually the first part of this story that I wrote, months and months back. The rest of the tale built itself around that scene, and it continues to grow rapidly. I have a feeling my 8-chapter estimate may still be a little too short. Which is freakin' crazy, because this chapter ended up being almost 12,000 word long. Yeesh! I need to sleep.
> 
> I'm so pleased that everyone's keen to see Sam Wilson. He'll be popping up in a couple of chapters' time. And then he'll be staying for the remainder of this series, because Sam Wilson is awesome and I've already planned out his solo story. ;)
> 
> I know there's a lot of magical mumbo-jumbo in this chapter, sort of a mishmash of sci-fi and Arthurian myth, so if anyone got a bit lost or would like some clarification, feel free to ask below! I always welcome questions and critique. :)
> 
> S.C xxx


	5. Chapter 5

It was a weird experience, feeling like a stranger in his own home.

Clint had missed out on so much; battles and birthdays, victories and losses. The team hadn’t changed in any significant way, but they weren’t the same people that Clint remembered, either. Not entirely.

Like the tower, it was clear that toil and hardship had torn chunks from them over the past five months (Peter especially), and while the scaffolding was long gone, their structure had been reformed; perceptions changed, attitudes adjusted, relationships restructured. And the worst part was, Clint didn’t know _why_ they’d changed because he hadn’t been there to witness it.

Mission reports were all well and good if you wanted a detailed, impersonal account of the events that had taken place during his absence, but that told him _fuck all_ about what had happened to his team in the aftermath of every battle, after SHIELD had packed up and gone home. The files didn’t tell him if anyone had been there in Clint’s place to coax Steve into a sparring match when difficult missions had inevitably reawakened memories of falling and crashing and _freezing_ ; if anyone had kept him from beating his fists bloody against walls and doors and punching bags as the captain fought to chase away the images that haunted him. They didn’t mention how many sleepless nights Tony had suffered in the wake of his attempted assassination in October. Or how Peter had coped when a Copycat villain had donned a spandex suit and turned the general public against Spider-Man through a series of atrocious crimes that had resulted in dozens of deaths and millions of dollars in property damage. Or why Thor had stayed away on Asgard for a whole _month_ after Clint’s initial disappearance. giving no explanation to SHIELD upon his return beyond _‘pressing family matters’_.

There were so many questions he needed to ask. But was it worth it, at the risk of triggering further pain? To poke at still-healing wounds in order to satisfy his own curiosity? No. No, there were episodes in Clint’s past that he never wanted to revisit; the least he could do was afford his teammates that same curtesy.

Besides, there were more pressing concerns at hand. Like the fact that he was still struggling to find his way around the Avengers Tower.

Following his discharge from SHIELD Medical, he’d spent the first forty-eight hours reacquainting himself with the sixty-story monstrosity that he’d grown to call ‘home’, stubbing his toes on unexpected items of furniture in every room and walking into screen doors that had previously been motion-sensitive but were now touch-activated, learning to use the fingerprint recognition panel to the right of the doorway and getting increasingly more pissed off when Jarvis always had to run his prints twice (the weird, soul-binding Voodoo-bracelet that Dr Strange had given him, while successfully keeping him from getting zapped into the future at any given moment, didn’t always agree with modern technology).

At least he wasn’t shorting out the power any more. Stephen had hypothesised that in addition to anchoring him to  _this_ reality (and that was weird – sanely acknowledging that there were a dozen or more inter-dimensional passages where he could casually hitchhike through time), the binding bracelet would act as insulator for the portion of the Stone’s power that had somehow been transferred to his living consciousness through the bond that existed between them. And so far, the sorcerer had been right. Heightened emotions weren’t triggering blackouts, and nothing had blown up when Phil had fucked his brains out last night, so he was assuming that was a good thing. Plus he seemed to exist in a perpetual state of frustration at the moment, since the elevators kept depositing him in the wrong place, and the lights hadn’t flickered _once_. Which was fortunate for everyone involved, unless the team had a pressing desire to live in a twenty-four hour disco.

The problem was, it wasn’t just minor cosmetic changes. Whole _floors_ had moved – the communal gym equipment had been relocated to two floors up, and a holographic battle simulator had been built in its place for the purpose of training and team-building exercises. Which was fucking _awesome_ , no arguments there, but the corridors were seriously lacking a few dozen signposts.

He wasn’t even gonna _try_ to memorize the layout of the communal kitchen cupboards. It made his eye twitch just thinking about it.

However, lucky bastard that he was, he’d gone and married a creature of habit, so there were only a few minor alterations to the apartment he and Phil shared. A new potted plant here, a coffee table there. A couple of new mugs in the cabinet, a different coffee machine (although Tony upgraded his gadgets on a monthly basis, so Clint was used to working with new models).

Oh, and dog beds. Like, four dog beds. And enough squeaky toys to stock a small pet store.

“There’s definitely only one dog in this tower, right?” he asked Peter, four days into his self-directed rehabilitation, rolling a jingling rubber ball across his living room floor and watching as Sully went lumbering after it with all the grace of a drunken elephant.

“Last time I checked.” The teenager glanced up from his perch on the arm of the couch, one leg tucked underneath him and the other swinging to and fro absently, his sketchbook propped open in his lap. “Why?”

“Because,” Clint braced himself for impact as the St Bernard did an about-face and began charging back towards him, “my apartment looks like someone’s trying to turn it into- _umph!”_

He rocked back in his sitting position, letting the momentum carry him to the floor as the dog careened into him, pressing his lips together tightly with a grimace as a rough, slobbery tongue lapped eagerly at the lower half of his face, the ball rolling past his head with a merry jingle, momentarily forgotten.

“Into an animal shelter,” he finished, once he’d managed to push the mutt away.

Peter gave a lazy shrug, and the faint scratch of graphite-on-paper resumed as he glanced back down again. “Guess he likes it here.”

“Right.”

He heaved himself upright again, wiping the saliva from his chin, and bent down to retrieve the discarded ball, scratching behind Sully’s ears when the dog whined eagerly and pranced from foot to foot like an honest-to-god puppy, impatiently waiting for the game to resume. Clint shook the ball in front of Sully’s nose to make it jingle, glancing sideways at Peter as he drew his arm back.

“And I’m assuming that’s why there’s a ton of dog food in my store cupboard?”

“Mm-hmm.”

The ball went rolling across the floor again, 250lbs of furry canine charging after it, and Clint took advantage of the brief reprieve to move closer to the couch, settling himself back down on the edge of the rug near the fake ornamental fireplace and stretching his legs out in front of him. He patted his thighs twice and held out a hand towards the oversized dog, which was all the invitation Sully needed to trot back over to him and collapse across his lap with a satisfied huff, tail wagging rhythmically. His thighs protested the weight, but Clint figured it was a small price to pay, all things considered, and indulged himself for several minutes by scrubbing his fingers through the thick fur and listening to the _swish-swish_ of Sully’s tail against the rug. But his attention never fully strayed from the teenager perched on his couch, his gaze again cataloguing the clues that he’d picked up the moment Peter had stepped into the apartment forty-five minutes ago, taking time to mentally process them now.

It was pretty clear what was going on, really. The fact that Peter had known which cupboard held the glasses without needing to root around when Clint had told him to help himself to a drink; the familiarity in which Sully treated the apartment – trotting over to retrieve his ball from the dog bed in the corner of the living room the moment he was through the door, rather than sniffing around and exploring every nook and cranny, like most dogs would; the fact that Peter had taken one glance at the closed door to Phil’s office and come to the immediate (and accurate) conclusion that he was in the middle of a vid-conference with the Security Council rather than simply wanting privacy while he did paperwork; and of course, there was the old SHIELD hoody Peter was currently wearing (one of half a dozen that Phil had sitting at the back of his closet for those rare, lazy days). It all surmounted to one irrefutable conclusion.

“How often do you stay over?”

Peter’s leg stopped swinging briefly, which might as well have been handwritten and countersigned confirmation of Clint’s suspicions. Silence hung between them for a long, tense moment, the hollow ticking of the antique clock on the mantelpiece the only other sound in the room beyond Sully’s happy tail-swishing.

“Sometimes I have trouble sleeping,” Peter answered eventually, the words a low murmur as his leg resumed its previous state of motion. “And, you know, I guess it’s pretty quiet this high up the tower; you can’t hear sirens or people shouting all hours of the night. It’s peaceful.” He cleared his throat, shifting in his perch restlessly. “Um. Phil said it was okay?”

“Yeah, man. Mi casa es su casa,” Clint assured him easily, thumping Sully’s belly a few times while the dog panted happily. “But I didn’t ask ‘why’, kid. I asked ‘how often’.”

Peter fiddled with the corner of his paper, shrugging again. “Maybe a couple of nights a week?”

Well, that certainly explained why one of the dog beds was in the spare bedroom. And why their spare bedroom actually looked habitable rather than untouched and gathering dust. And why he’d found a box of _Lucky Charms_ in one of the kitchen cupboards, when Phil had always vocally protested the existence of sugary breakfast cereals.

“So how come this is the first time I’ve seen you up here since I got out of medical?” he asked carefully, keeping half an eye on the teenager as he brushed his hand down Sully’s spine.

Peter shrugged again, rolling the pencil between his fingers and looking everywhere except at Clint. “Guess I’m sleeping better now.”

“You are, huh?”

“Yup.”

“Uh-huh. Then how come the bags under your eyes are telling me a different story?”

The teenager’s shoulders hunched, the pencil scratching sharply against his sketchbook. “I’m fine, dude.”

“Yeah?” Clint regarded him critically. “How much sleep did you get last night?”

“Enough,” Peter answered shortly.

“Enough to what?” he pressed. “Enough to keep functioning on low-power for another day or so? Enough to stop you from keeling over halfway through dinner?”

The younger man’s brow creased, his posture hunching further. “Dude, I’m _fine_. Super-human here, remember? I can manage just fine with only a couple hour’s shut-eye.”

The archer sighed. “Look, Peter-”

“Clint, just drop it already!”

He let the kid squirm for a minute or two in the silence left in the wake of his outburst, before gently nudging Sully off his legs and climbing to his feet, dusting off the loose dog hair that still clung to his pants.

“Alright. Come on, then.”

Peter blinked, turning his head to follow Clint’s movements as the archer crossed the spacious living room, heading for the door. “What? Where are we going?”

“I was gone five and half months,” Clint pointed out casually. “I wanna see if your fighting technique’s improved while I’ve been away.”

The teenager closed his sketchpad slowly and set it to one side, unfolding from the couch awkwardly and tapping the side of his thigh in a wordless command, scratching behind Sully’s ears when the dog obediently crossed the room to trot alongside him. Clint shot him a cheery smile before turning to lead the way along corridor, down past the door to Phil’s office (still closed – and the soundproofing meant that all hopes of eavesdropping on the conference with the Security Council had long since been thwarted) and around the corner to their private gymnasium.

It wasn’t as large or impressive as the communal gym twenty-eight floors down, but it had all the basic apparatus lined up along the far wall, where floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the city far below. There were a few bars and ropes and chain-ladders attached to the high ceiling for strength-training purposes, although the assortment paled in comparison to the inverted, adult-sized jungle gym Clint had helped design for Peter, the one that had been built into the ceiling of the teenager’s Skate-floor (a _‘congratulations-on-your-survival’_ gift from the team after the kid had almost died of an acute respiratory infection six months ago).

But the area of the gym that was utilised most frequently was the spacious padded area that spanned the full width of the room, from wall to wall on either side, and stretched out from two feet in front of the door right up to the row of workout machines by the windows, stopping an inch or two short of the rear of the treadmill.

It was _awesome._

He sparred often enough in the communal gym too, usually with Steve or Tasha, but _here_ the walls and floor were padded sufficiently to allow Clint and Phil to beat the shit out of each other without causing irreparable damage. When he and his partner sparred, they _sparred._ Phil wasn’t accustomed to losing, and Clint was a stubborn bastard who loved a challenge, so ninety percent of their combat sessions ended in a truce, both of them breathless and sore and red-faced and sweating and grinning like rookie agents half their age. Phil never sparred with anyone else like that. It was a marital thing.

But hey, it wasn’t all _that_ unusual, right? Some couples bonded over nature walks and picnics. He and Phil bonded over violence. Same difference.

“Step on up,” he invited, kicking off his shoes near the door and rolling easily into a series of perfect cartwheels that brought him closer to the centre of the sparring area. “Let’s see what you’ve got. Oh, and hey.” He gestured vaguely towards the teenager’s attire. “You might wanna lose the hoody, kid.”

Peter pulled the garment over his head, draping it over the top of the water cooler that stood near the door. With a careful, clear hand-gesture, he instructed Sully to lay down, the dog responding obediently with a happy swish of his tail, licking Peter’s hand when the teen bent down to pet him.

“You sure this isn’t gonna trigger any…unwanted side-effects?” the younger man asked hesitantly as he stepped closer, his gaze flickering down to the binding charm on Clint’s wrist.

“Nah,” the archer dismissed casually, “I’ve sparred plenty since I got back from HQ. It’s all under control.”

Peter’s posture relaxed a little at that, and he shook his arms out, limbering up. “So, what’s the game plan, my man? Tap-count? Block-and-drop?”

“Nope.” Smiling, Clint shifted his stance to get a steady base, spreading his arms wide. “All you gotta do is pin me. Pin me, and you get to take my Sky Cycle out for a spin as often as you like for a full week.”

The teenager’s face lit up like it was Christmas (and oh _shit_ , it nearly was, Clint seriously needed to do some shopping), and he brought his arms up in a faux fighting stance, grinning. “Alright, I’m in. So what happens if _you_ pin _me_?”

“Nothing,” Clint replied with an easy shrug. “You’re gonna be hitting the mat helluva lot, kid, it’d be cruel to rub salt in all those wounds.”

“Pfft,” Peter scoffed, still grinning. “You’re all talk, old man. I could take you any day.”

“Even when you’re tired?” the archer asked mildly, and at the precise moment Peter’s brow flickered into a frown, he lashed out with his left leg, sock-clad foot striking the teenager in the centre of his chest and sending him stumbling back several paces. “Pay attention.”

“Sneak,” Peter accused, wincing a little, but his smile was back. “I’ll get you for that.”

Clint crooked a finger at him in return, a teasing _‘come-hither’_ , and soon enough he was locked in a fast-paced exchange of blows, blocking the teenager’s attack and countering with quick, sharp finger-jabs to Peter’s ribs and stomach, not hard enough to hurt but sharp enough to be an annoyance. The kid was _good_ , of course, his super-powers gifting him with reflexes that most teenagers could only dream of, and a level of flexibility that allowed him to bend _around_ blows that opponents such as Steve and Tony wouldn’t have been able to dodge. But speed and agility were only half of the recipe, the missing ingredients in this case being strategic intelligence and almost two decades’ worth of fighting experience. Clint had plenty of tricks up his sleeve that Peter wouldn’t be anticipating.

And just as he’d predicted, sleep deprivation had dulled the kid’s Spidey-senses (like it always did), so when Clint dropped down suddenly and kicked out with his left leg in a side-swipe, Peter reacted half a second too late, grunting as his legs were swept out from underneath him and he was flipped onto his back, hitting the mat with a resounding _thwap_.

Clint crouched down over him, his expression mild, and formed the shape of a gun with his hand, tapping the centre of Peter’s chest.

“You’re dead.”

Peter pushed his hand away, rolling to his feet. “Lucky strike.”

“Calculated hit,” Clint corrected without rising from his crouch, and leaned his weight on one hand to tuck a foot behind Peter’s ankle the moment the kid had regained his balance, grabbing hold of the belt loops on his jeans and yanking _hard,_ sending him crashing back down onto the mat again.

He tapped the kid’s chest a second time. “That’s death number two. You gonna take this lying down?”

The younger man frowned at him for a moment, then sprung up in a burst of movement, one hand grasping Clint’s bicep and the other landing on his shoulder, clearly with the intention of flipping the archer over his head to pin him down. Clint didn’t resist the move (he couldn’t, what with the kid’s superior strength) or try to block it, but instead pushed against the mat with both feet to fuel his momentum, using the added boost to spin himself around mid-air and grip Peter’s wrist in turn, twisting the youth’s arm up behind his back as they rolled.

“Ach!” the teenager complained when he found himself pinned face-down on the padded floor, Clint’s full weight pressing against his back.

“C’mon, kid,” the archer sighed, as Peter wriggled underneath him. “Five months, and you’ve already forgotten everything I taught you? Stop holding back.”

Peter stilled after a brief moment, clearly readying himself to bodily throw Clint to the side, but the archer rolled away the second he felt the kid’s muscles tensing, standing smoothly to his feet and raising his arms to block the anticipated blow when Peter leapt up and aimed a spinning wheel kick at his breastbone. When the first failed to connect, he spun into a second, then a third, successfully driving Clint back several paces, but only striking his poised forearms rather than the intended target.

On the fourth successive kick, Clint spun half a pace to the side and clamped his hands around the teenager’s lower leg, twisting hard enough that Peter wasn’t able to recover his balance, landing at an awkward angle on the mats, his leg still supported against Clint’s shoulder, the archer having crouched down smoothly with the motion so that the limb wasn’t hyperextended even beyond Peter’s super-human flexibility.

“Nice try,” he sympathised, patting the jean-clad calf muscle. “Good form on the kicks, nice control. Stupid plan. Never make the mistake of overusing a good move – especially if your opponent matches your skillset.” He slapped the kid’s thigh non-too-gently. “C’mon, rookie, _think._ Use your head.”

Peter huffed, pushing up quickly into a half-handstand and kicking out with his other leg, catching Clint smartly in the abdomen. The archer sailed back a few feet, landing with a grunt on his ass, slightly winded but grinning as he _whoop_ ed loudly

“Atta boy!”

The teenager flipped the right way up in the blink of an eye and charged at him, and Clint had just enough time to roll away and jump to his feet before they were locked in combat again, exchanging blows rapidly, a blur of striking limbs as each attack was dodged or deflected. Clint was breathing a little harder now, his heart pounding loudly in his ears, but he hadn’t so much as broken a sweat yet, whereas Peter looked fucking _exhausted._

Although to be fair, the kid had looked ready to drop before they’d even started, so that was hardly surprising.

Peter’s defences were weakening though, that much was clear. His blows were getting sloppier, his reflexes a microsecond slower, and he was repeatedly leaving himself unguarded whenever he lashed out with a kick, allowing Clint to smoothly dodge the blow and swiftly counter with one of his own. Thank God for super-healing, because Peter was going to have some seriously _impressive_ bruises after this.

A long while later (half an hour or so after Clint had _definitely_ broken into a sweat), when he slammed the youth face-down onto the mats again for the hundredth time, both the kid’s arms pinned behind his back, Peter groaned and went still beneath him.

“Okay,” he relented, his exhaustion evident. “I give up. You win.”

“Nope.” Clint pressed a little more weight down onto him. “You want to walk away from this, you gotta beat me first.”

Peter grunted and shifted underneath him again, to little affect. “Duuuude,” he whined. “I quit already.”

“Stamina’s not up to scratch today, huh?” Clint asked mildly as he rolled off the teenager to sit beside him, leaning back and bracing his weight on his hands in a comfortable semi-recline. “Good thing you’re not fighting an opponent who genuinely wants to hurt you. Electro? Scorpio? Kraven? They would’ve taken you out in a flash.”

The teenager went still, frowning down at his hands where they were braced to push himself up off the floor. “Shut up.”

“When you joined the team, you knew there were conditions,” the archer continued, and his tone was a touch firmer now. “You have to keep up with your training. You’re not allowed to run off and fight solo without clearance. And you’re _supposed_ to take care of yourself to make sure you’re not left vulnerable and exposed in the field.” He nudged Peter’s hip with his foot. “Wanna take a stab at guessing which of those rules you fucked up?”

“Screw you,” Peter grumbled, pushing himself up onto his knees, wincing. “Just because you beat me in a sparring match doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be able to handle myself out in the-”

Clint slammed him down onto his back in a sudden move _,_ his hands gripping the teenager’s forearms tightly, pinning them against the floor.

“You’re exhausted,” he said, low and hard. “Your reflexes are shit and your defences are weak because you haven’t _slept_ in four fucking days.” His grip tightened when Peter shifted to try and throw him off, keeping the teenager pinned. “This isn’t something you can just shrug off, kid. When insomnia reaches the point where it starts affecting your ability to protect yourself, you fucking _tell someone about it._ What would you have done if the Avengers had assembled this afternoon, huh? Put on the suit and gotten yourself _killed,_ that’s what.”

“Let me up,” Peter gritted out, his voice hoarse as his gaze flickered around to look anywhere but at the archer.

“No.” Clint released one of his arms to grip the youth’s chin, forcing the kid’s eyes up. “You _listen_ and you _learn,_ you understand me? Because next time there won’t be anyone to bench you before you run your crazy ass into the ground. The _next_ time you realise you’ve been compromised, it’ll be when you’re pinned underneath someone a lot bigger and a lot stronger than me who wants to put a bullet in your brain or a knife in your throat or fucking _incinerate_ you. And by then it’ll be too late.”

“Stop.” Peter’s voice cracked, a telling sheen of liquid making his eyes over-bright. “Clint, _stop it._ ”

Over by the door, Sully whined, and when Clint glanced up the dog was on his feet, paws moving against the padded flooring restlessly as he stared at Peter, unwilling to break the kid’s command to ‘stay’, but clearly sensing the teenager’s distress.

The archer sat back abruptly, breathing a little heavily, clenching his hands into fists to keep them from trembling. The binding charm on his wrist felt red-hot against his skin.

He took a slow, steadying breath.

“If camping out in my spare bedroom means that you actually get a decent amount of sleep,” he said, his tone softer now, “then for _fuck’s sake,_ Peter, pack a duffel bag and move in. Better that than watching you get yourself eviscerated in the field because you’re too damn _stubborn_ to ask for help.”

“You’re one to talk,” Peter muttered, pushing himself up into a sitting position slowly, swiping surreptitiously at his eyes.

Clint felt a sharp pang of guilt in his chest at the action, and with another sigh he leaned across to yank the kid into a crushing hug, wrapping his arms around the slighter frame and propping his chin on top of the messy mop of brown hair.

“Four days, Pete. You could’ve come to me _four_ fucking days ago.”

“I know,” Peter mumbled into his shoulder, his hands gripping the back of Clint’s sweaty t-shirt tightly. “I thought…I’d kinda hoped that it’d get better, y’know? Since you’re home now and things are back to normal. But it’s even _worse_ , and I don’t know why.”

“Buddy, nobody’s expecting you to suddenly be okay overnight,” Clint told him quietly. “These things take time. The past few months haven’t exactly been easy for anyone, but your luck’s been the shittiest, what with Electro and Osborne and fucking _Rhino_.” Peter tensed in his hold at that last name, and Clint’s arms tightened around him automatically. “And it’s alright not to be ‘okay’, you know? God knows _I’m_ not okay.”

Peter sagged a little further against him. “You’re not gonna tell Cap about this, are you?”

Clint probably should. Although the team had a fairly loose (read: almost non-existent) hierarchy, Steve was still their unofficial leader. And moreover, he was probably the closest thing Peter had to a responsible paternal figure. Stark didn’t count, despite his affection for the teenager, because Tony wasn’t exactly the epitome of a responsible adult. He still forgot to feed himself sometimes.

“Clint?” Peter wheedled when the older Avenger didn’t respond straight away. “He’ll bench me if he finds out, you know he will. He’ll get that _worried_ look, man. That’s why I started coming up here instead; Coulson doesn’t worry about _anything._ ”

The archer sighed again, rubbing the kid’s back, but he was smiling now. “Alright. My lips are sealed – but only _if_ you promise me that you’ll tell someone next time the insomnia builds up like that.”

Peter nodded quickly. “I promise.”

“And you’re sleeping up here for the rest of the week,” Clint added, pushing the teenager away to look at him properly. “Longer, if I think it’s necessary. Starting right now.”

“Now?”

“Now.” The archer stood, reaching down to haul the teenager up with him. He snapped his fingers and Sully scampered over quickly to greet them both. “Shower first, then bed. I’ll wake you when dinner’s ready.”

“Lasagne?” Peter asked hopefully, because the kid had him wrapped around his little finger, goddammit.

Clint rolled his eyes, dragging him out into the corridor and nudging him towards the spare bedroom. “You’re really not in a position to be negotiating anything, chuck. But yes, I’ll make lasagne.”

Peter fist-pumped the air, then clutched at his ribs with a dramatic groan when it pulled at sore, bruised muscles. Clint snorted and shoved at him again, more gently this time.

“Shower, kid. It’ll help.”

Later, much later, when the smell of basil and tomato and garlic hung in the air and an enormous dish of lasagne cooked in the oven, a bedraggled, sleepy-eyed teenager appeared in the doorway to the living room, dressed in a pair of sleep pants and the borrowed SHIELD hoody that looked at least three sizes too big on him.

Sully raised his head from Clint’s lap and woofed softly, tail wagging. And at the opposite end of the couch, Phil lowered his Kindle to smile at the youth.

“Evening. Did you sleep well?”

Yawning against the back of his hand, Peter nodded, eyes still at half-mast as he shuffled across the room to plop down onto the couch between the two agents, blinking slowly. He stroked a hand over Sully’s head when the dog shifted to sit down directly in front of him, lips kicking up into a sleepy smile.

Clint stood, ruffling the teenager’s hair as he moved towards the archway that separated the living room from the adjoining kitchen. “You want a soda, sport?”

“Mmf,” Peter acknowledged unhelpfully, tucking his bare feet up underneath him with a slight wince and canting slowly to one side until he was leaning against Phil’s shoulder. The senior agent, of course, didn’t miss the brief expression of pain.

“Everything alright?”

“No.” Peter’s brow furrowed fractionally, even as he kept his eyes closed. “Clint beat me up.”

“Did he now?” Phil’s gaze flickered across to the archway where his partner stood leaning against the frame, arms crossed over his chest, and arched an eyebrow at him curiously.

“We were sparring; he was compromised,” Clint explained unapologetically. “I pulled a Rule 19 on him.”

“Ah.” Phil’s gaze returned to the teenager and he raised an arm to lightly tap his Kindle against the top of Peter’s head. “You’ve heard that lecture before, Parker. Quit whining.”

Peter muttered to himself, disgruntled, shifting a little to get more comfortable. “It didn’t hurt this much last time. And stop hitting me, you’re supposed to be the _nice_ one _._ ”

“Am I?” the senior agent asked, even as he shifted to drape an arm over the teenager’s shoulders. “You hear that, Clint? I’m the nice one. I hope you’re writing this down.”

“Verbatim, Boss.”

“Here’s an idea,” Peter proposed, stroking Sully’s muzzle idly with one hand as he opened his eyes to a squint. “How about Clint sticks to combat training and _you_ handle the lectures from now on?”

Phil chuckled, returning his attention to the novel he was reading. “To be fair, Clint doesn’t pull the _Important Life Lessons_ act very often,” he mused. “You’re one of the privileged few, actually.”

“Gee,” the kid drawled sardonically. “My bruised ribs are _totally_ honoured.”

Clint tossed a garlic clove at him, and something tight and uncomfortable that had been sitting high up in his chest finally began to unfurl when the teenager’s eyes immediately snapped open, his hand shooting out to catch the projectile before it could come within a foot of its intended target.

“Jerk,” Peter grouched, lobbing it back at him with perfect accuracy even with his eyes half-closed again, and Clint let it bounce off his chest without complaint, relieved to see that a few hours’ sleep had improved matters considerably.

The binding charm on his wrist finally stopped buzzing after that.

 

 

 

 

 

O~o~O

 

 

 

 

 

“Do we have to do this now?” Tony petitioned, nursing a mug of coffee between his hands as he watched the thick, white flakes being tossed in the swirling wind outside the window.

“His psych leave is almost up,” Steve reminded him, the super-soldier’s body a pillar of warmth against Tony’s back as the blond came to stand behind him, strong arms wrapping around his midriff. “We can’t use that as a scapegoat forever, Tony. The issue needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.”

Tony sighed, dropping a hand from his mug to squeeze Steve’s fingers. “C’mon, have a heart. It’ll be Christmas in a couple of days; he won’t want this hanging over him, it’ll ruin the holiday. He’s been through enough shit as it is, can’t we just leave it a little while longer? He’s got another week of psych leave, and he won’t be going out into the field before then, he knows Coulson would kick his ass. We don’t have to talk about it right away.”

“Then when _do_ we tell him?” Steve pressed, but it was clear by his tone that he’d already given in.

“What, that he’s basically benched until further notice?” Tony asked, and shook his head. “I’m still holding out for ‘never’, to be honest.” He set his coffee cup down on the arm of the couch closest to them, turning in Steve’s arms to settle his hands on the captain’s shoulders. “Strange might actually come through for us this time, you never know. Season of miracles and all that.”

Steve sighed again, his gaze shifting back to stare out the window even as he brought Tony in closer to brush his lips against the shorter man’s temple.

“Alright,” he acquiesced after a brief pause. “I’ll tell Fury to wait until after Christmas.”

“Thank you.” Tony rose up onto the balls of his feet to steal a quick kiss, before patting Steve’s (ridiculously attractive) washboard abs. “Now hurry up and put a shirt on before I give into temptation and ravish you. We’ve got work to do. I promised Pete we’d help pick out a tree for the living room.”

The soldier’s brow creased a little as he went to rummage in his chest of drawers for a fresh shirt. “I’m not sure it’s such a good idea to go out driving in this weather, doll. The roads are gonna be hellish.”

“Don’t get your britches in a twist, Grandpa,” Tony drawled, tossing the man his jacket once he’d pulled a sweater over his head. “Nobody’s driving you anywhere. Clint’s prepping the Quinjet.”

“He’s what?”

Tony sauntered over with a sultry sway of his hips and grabbed the captain’s hand, lacing their fingers together and smiling slyly as he led him towards the exit. “Did I neglect to mention that we’ll be kidnapping Rhodey from the Air Force base on our way back?”

“It might’ve slipped your mind, yeah.”

“Besides,” the mechanic added once they were in the elevator, thoroughly enjoying Steve’s bemused expression, “I know a guy who grows trees; kinda promised him we’d be there this afternoon. It isn’t exactly somewhere you can drive to using conventional means.”

Steve sighed, glancing heavenwards briefly. “Is it in another country?”

“…Maybe.”

“No, Tony.”

“Ah-ah, nope, you can’t back out of it now,” Tony insisted with false sincerity, poking him in the chest. “You put clothes on. It’s officially a mission.”

The captain pressed a hand against Tony’s lower back to yank him in closer, the corner of his mouth twitching as he dipped down to kiss the sensitive patch of skin below his partner’s ear.

“I can always take them off again.”

“Full marks for effort,” the mechanic awarded, his voice a pitch lower than before as he tilted his head a little to the side to give Steve better access to his neck. “But that’s still not gonna dissuade me from going.”

“You sure?” Steve murmured, switching to the other side, his hand sliding lower to squeeze Tony’s ass through the denim of his pants. “I can be pretty persuasive, Mr Stark.”

“Objection,” Tony stated, although it mostly came out as a moan. “That’s completely out of line, you kinky bastard.”

Steve chuckled against his throat. “You sure you don’t wanna just buy a tree from one of the gardening stores downtown? We’d have more time on our hands for other activities…”

“Nng,” the older man complained, and pressed his hands against Steve’s chest to give himself enough leverage to lean back and glare up at him. “You’re cheating, Rogers. Stop it.”

The soldier smiled, amusement shining in his eyes even as he dipped down to brush their lips together in a quick, apologetic kiss. “Not gonna work, huh?”

“No.” Tony curled a hand around the back of Steve’s neck to yank him back down again for a deeper, more heated kiss, which left them both a little flushed and breathless when they parted several steamy moments later. “But hold onto that thought until we get back from Latvia, ‘kay?”

Steve smiled at him, stepping back half a pace as the elevator doors finally opened (Tony was _insanely_ grateful that he’d created the Privacy Protocol all those months ago so that Jarvis would stop depositing them on the communal floors when they were still making out enthusiastically). The mechanic sauntered ahead quickly before his words could fully register, and he was already halfway up the ramp to the Quinjet by the time Steve’s incredulous voice rang out after him.

“Hold on, _Latvia?”_

 

 

 

 

O~o~O

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas day was fucking _awesome,_ even if the circlet of silver around his wrist meant that he couldn’t fully pretend that everything was back to normal.

He woke up to the sound of scuffling and whining coming from the closed bedroom door, rolling out of bed with a huff to let Sully in and getting a snowball to the face for his pains.

“Merry Christmas!” Peter crowed, dressed in sweatpants and an absolutely _atrocious_ Avengers-themed Christmas jumper. He was grinning down at Clint from the ceiling, stuck to the smooth surface by his bare feet and the tips of his fingers. “Steve’s making everyone breakfast downstairs; hurry up and get dressed so we can open presents.”

Wiping melting snow from his face, Clint scratched behind Sully’s ears to stop the St Bernard’s impatient nosing, stepping to the side so that the dog could trot past him to go and greet Phil, who had already rolled over to the edge of the bed and lowered an arm obligingly for Sully to sniff.

“Hey Phil?” he called back to his partner as cold water trickled down his neck to soak into the collar of his t-shirt. “How’s this for a front-page photo: Spider-Man swinging through Manhattan with his leg in a cast?”

“‘Breaking news’ would be an adequate caption, I believe,” the senior agent quipped.

“Aw, c’mon,” Peter wheedled, wisely staying on the ceiling out of reach while Clint peered up at him through narrowed eyes. “You can’t beat me up, man, it’s _Christmas._ ”

Phil appeared behind Clint, looping an arm around his waist to give him a quick squeeze, Sully at his heel. “Don’t bloody up my carpets, Barton, or you’ll be sleeping on the couch tonight.” He glanced up and Peter and snapped his fingers, pointing to the floor. “Parker, down.”

The teenager sighed but obeyed, yelping as he was immediately yanked into a headlock, Clint’s knuckles rubbing firmly against his scalp. But he was grinning when the archer released him, so no harm done.

They trailed down to breakfast a short while later, before heading into the communal living room to open presents. Clint could see why the kid had been so eager to dig into the pile of gifts under the tree – it seemed to have grown exponentially overnight. Apparently Tony had gone completely overboard again this year. Clint couldn’t really see a downside to that, other than the potential for losing a large bulk of his storage space upstairs.

“I know it looks like a lot, but half of those are just actual-people-clothes for Coulson,” the billionaire said dismissively, curled up on the couch in his bath robe with an obscenely large mug of coffee cradled between his hands, a Santa hat sitting lopsided on his head.

“If you’ve bought him skinny jeans, I’ll kiss you,” Clint enthused, tugging on the purple Christmas sweater that Thor had bought for him. There was a black cartoon hawk printed on the front, wearing a tiny red Santa hat, and a giant Avengers ‘A’ on the back to mark it as official merchandise. It was _awesome._

“If he’s bought me skinny jeans, I’m getting my taser,” Phil countered flatly, crossing over from the drinks bar where he’d been fixing himself another cup of coffee.

“I second that notion,” Natasha added from her perch on the arm of Bruce’s chair, admiring the shiny set of throw-knives that Clint had bought for her (and thank God he still had contacts in Europe; getting a decent set this close to Christmas had been a nightmare).

Stark pressed a hand against his chest, feigning shock. “I’m being threatened here. Me, threatened, in my own home. Steve? Steve, there are threats being made, I hope you realise that.”

“Mm-hm,” the captain acknowledged absently (although his lips were twitching in an almost-smile) as he thumbed through the thick, hardback book of Studio Ghibli artwork that Phil and Clint had given him. “That’s nice, honey.”

Tony frowned, then turned his attention towards the individual who was currently playing tug o’ war with Sully (the dog had probably gotten more gifts than the rest of them combined, because the entire team were thoroughly and irredeemably smitten).

“Hey, don’t go looking at me for help,” Rhodey denied, swaying the thick loop of colourful rope from side to side as Sully pulled against it, tail wagging happily. “You’re nuts if you think I’m protecting your ass against Romanov. I’m not stupid.”

Fortunately (for Tony, that was – Clint was still sorely disappointed) the mechanic hadn’t actually bought Phil half a dozen pairs of skinny jeans. Instead, the wrapping paper gave way to tasteful ties and dress shirts and expensive stationary. And a jewellery case containing three sets of cufflinks.

“Tools, not jewels,” Tony told them, when the lid of the jewellery case suddenly turned into a miniature holographic projector. “One set’s designed to take a three-dimensional scan of the surrounding area and relay it back to the box, in case it’s too dangerous to maintain an open communications channel. That middle set can act as a pair of sonic disruptors, so I wouldn’t fiddle with those if I were you. And that third set, well. They just look nice.”

“They’re great, Tony,” Phil assured him, closing the box carefully and sending a quiet smile towards the mechanic. “Thanks.”

“No biggie.” Tony took another gulp of his coffee to hide the pleased twitch of his lips. “They’ve all got micro-trackers installed, too, just in case you decide to run off someday and take over the world. Fair warning: I’ll find you.”

“No you won’t,” Clint and Natasha said in unison.

“You’re all _crazy,”_ Rhodey told them firmly, like he always did whenever they managed to drag him back to the tower for a few days.

Tony just blew him a kiss.

An hour or so later, Steve and Peter left to collect May Parker from her house in Forrest Hills, while the rest of the assembled team began the arduous task of carting all the gifts back up to their respective floors. It took a while. Leaving Phil to organise the arrangement and/or storage of the large pile of household knickknacks that currently took up a significant portion of their living room floor space (he would’ve offered to help, but Phil was very particular about these sort of things, and it would only end badly if he intervened), Clint returned to the communal area and sat with Bruce for a while, sipping sweet, seasonal herbal teas and taking turns rolling an Avengers-themed ball for Sully to fetch.

Someone (probably Peter) had stuck a pair of soft, felt antlers to the dog’s head, but Sully didn’t seem to mind. Living with a bunch of lunatics, he was probably used to it.

Movement out of the corner of Clint’s eye caught his attention, and he glanced sharply towards the windows that lined the far wall – or, more specifically, towards the large balcony that lay beyond the reinforced screen doors contained therein.

Amid the swirling snowflakes stood a tall figure, red cloak flapping out behind him in the wind, and at first glance Clint thought it was Thor. But it couldn’t be – the Asgardian had flown off to greet Jane at the airport, they weren’t due back for another hour at least. He looked again, standing slowly to his feet and holding up a hand towards Bruce when the scientist made as though to rise alongside him. After half a beat, however, he relaxed again, crossing the room towards the screen doors and keying in the access code so that they slid open to allow the visitor inside.

“Dr Strange,” he greeted, hitting the button to close the doors again as quickly as possible and dropping down to grab Sully by his collar when the dog tried to dash past him, getting dragged along several feet for his pains. “Sully, _no.”_

“Stephen.” Bruce hurried over to shake the man’s hand as Clint grudgingly accepted Sully’s apologetic face-licking. “I’m glad you could make it. You weren’t standing out there too long, were you?”

“No, no, not at all.” The sorcerer smiled as he surveyed the festively decorated room. “It looks as though your team has chosen to embrace the holiday spirit.”

“Just wait until you see how much food Stark’s ordered in,” Clint remarked, nudging the St Bernard away and accepting Stephen’s proffered hand. “You’re welcome to join us, there’s plenty to go around.”

“Thank you for the invitation, but I’m afraid I have prior obligations.” Strange squeezed his hand briefly, then dropped down onto one knee gracefully to greet Sully like an old friend, shaking the dog’s paw when it was proffered (and Clint’s suspicions about just how often the doctor had visited the tower over the past five months were confirmed immediately). “I only stopped by to wish you all a Merry Christmas. And for a quiet chat, Agent Barton, if I could beg a moment of your time?”

Clint shared a quick glance with Bruce, who dipped his head in a shallow nod and gripped his shoulder briefly, reassuringly.

“Sure, Doc,” Clint agreed, grateful that it came out casual despite the uneasy churning of his stomach. “Let me fix you up a coffee or something first.”

“That would be appreciated,” Stephen said as he rose from his crouch, smiling. “It’s a little cold out.”

Bruce slapped his thigh as he stepped away. “C’mon, boy,” he coaxed, as Sully’s head turned to look at him. He waited until the dog had obediently bounded over before fixing both men with a calm, easy smile. “We’ll be downstairs if you need us. Great seeing you again, Stephen.”

“And you, Bruce,” the sorcerer acknowledged pleasantly. He waited until the physicist had departed before joining Clint at the drinks counter, taking a seat on one of the bar stools. “So,” he regarded the archer steadily, “how do you fare, my friend?”

Clint shrugged, busying himself with working Tony’s fancy-pants coffee machine. “I haven’t blown anything up,” he remarked offhandedly. “I’m taking that as a step in the right direction.”

“Quite,” Stephen agreed. He held out a hand towards the arm where the bracelet gleamed. “May I?”

With a slow nod, Clint obligingly extended the limb towards him. Strange pushed his sleeve up a little, tracing the tips of his fingers – warm and baby-soft, which was unexpected considering the state of the weather, although he strongly suspected magic was involved somewhere – along Clint’s forearm. He didn’t touch the trinket directly, but held his hand a hairsbreadth above it, fingers spread, closing his eyes briefly. After a long, tense moment, he opened them again and smiled, releasing the archer.

“All is well,” he assured the archer. “The binding charm remains unbroken. And, as predicted, it’s successfully suppressing the power that lies within you. I would not seek to test it, however – I strongly urge you to avoid situations that could induce a state of heightened anxiety. Your consciousness may call upon that power out of a sense of self-preservation, and I fear the soul anchor would not hold.”

Clint slid the hot beverage across the countertop towards him. “You think I should steer clear of active duty, don’t you?”

“I believe that would be wise, yes,” the sorcerer confirmed quietly, watching Clint with a guarded look. “Director Fury has spoken to you of this?”

“No, not exactly.” Clint leaned his crossed arms against the smooth marble surface and sighed, his expression resigned. “But I know the guys have been thinking about it. Tony keeps changing the subject every time I try to ask him about something mission-related. And Steve looks permanently guilty.”

“Subtlety has never been their greatest strength,” Stephen mused, taking a careful sip of his drink.

“Mm.”

Silence hung between them for several minutes as the sorcerer focused on drinking his coffee and Clint stared out at the swirling snowflakes through the wall of windows. Another pressing question was sitting on the tip of his tongue, but he was hesitant to ask it, partly because he feared what the answer would be, and partly because he already _knew_ what the answer was going to be. But he had to hear it from the sorcerer himself, if only to put his mind at rest.

“I don’t suppose you’ve had any luck finding a solution to the soul-bond problem, have you?”

Stephen sighed against the rim of his mug, closing his eyes briefly as he set it back down again before his gaze shifted to meet Clint’s, the regret there sufficiently answering the question without need for words.

“I’m sorry, Clint,” he murmured, quiet and sincere. “I’m still looking, I swear to you. But the Elders of the Black Circle had never even heard of such an occurrence, and the Druids of Kent could only tell me what we already know – that breaking the bond by force would probably kill you.”

“Right,” Clint acknowledged. He wasn’t really surprised by the news. But even so, a small, naïve part of him had still clung to the hope that maybe the light at the end of the tunnel was drawing closer.

“There are still other sources I haven’t spoken to,” Stephen encouraged softly. “And this?” He tapped the area of skin just above Clint’s bracelet where his arms rested against the countertop. “This means we’re not pressed for time, Clint. As long as you keep wearing it, you’ll be safe. Unless-”

“Unless my arm feels like it’s about to fall off,” Clint interjected, having heard this same warning at least three times over the past week. “I know, Doc.”

“The release is on the underside,” the sorcerer continued, ignoring the interruption as he gently rotated Clint’s arm to indicate the silver clasp fastened at the bottom. “But only use it if the need is dire. This serves a last resort, when the Infinity Stone seeks to pull you from this reality and its grip on you is too strong for the anchor to endure. Releasing the catch will spare your life, but you will also rid yourself of the bonds that tether you here.”

Wait, whoa, _what?_

“You mean taking off this bracelet basically _guarantees_ that I’ll end up getting zapped into the future again?” he demanded.

Strange inclined his head gravely. “Which is why you must only remove it if you have no other choice.” He glanced at the bracelet again. “Tell me, have you experienced any discomfort as of late? Heat, cold, pins and needles in your hand?”

Clint shrugged, still frowning a little. “Nothing to write home about. Sometimes it heats up when my adrenaline’s pumping, but it doesn’t last long. And it buzzes sometimes, you know? Vibrates. Usually when I’m worried.”

“That’s to be expected,” Stephen reassured, leaning back in his seat, drumming his fingers against the ceramic coffee mug. “I don’t anticipate the sensations worsening beyond what you’ve already experienced, unless someone tries to tamper with the Soul Stone. Provided it remains asleep, all should be well. But you’ll contact me immediately if anything seems out of sorts?

The archer nodded. “Sure thing.”

“Then I’ll take my leave of you.” Draining the last of his coffee, Strange stood, reaching out to clap Clint on the shoulder. “Until the next time, my friend.”

Then with swirl of his red cloak and a flutter of fabric, he was gone, leaving Clint alone in the living room with only the loud pounding of his own heartbeat for company. He uncurled his fisted hands, leaning against the bar briefly as he took several deep, steadying breaths. Everything was fine. Stephen had assured him that emotional outbursts wouldn’t trigger anything serious, and since the Infinity Stone was heavily guarded behind inches of reinforced steel in lockup back at HQ, the risk of somebody tampering with it was minimal. Besides, the sorcerer had told him that he’d only be thrown into the future if he took the bracelet off.

Simple solution – he wouldn’t be taking it off.

 

 

 

 

O~o~O

 

 

 

 

 

Giant flying squid invaded Sydney on New Year’s Eve.

Business as usual, really.

Only this time, Clint was stuck watching it all from the sidelines, relying on news feeds with shaky camera footage and the data from the Quinjet’s sensors to visualise the scale of the battle. Some sort of external interference was filling the Avengers’ open com-line with static, random snippets of sentences and garbled half-words breaking through the hiss of static every now and then. Which _seriously_ put Clint on edge. A team who couldn’t communicate wasn’t a team, it was a bunch of solo acts attempting to cooperate without any real idea of what the plan was.

It soon transpired, however, that the interference wasn’t affecting the Avengers directly, only the long-range feedback channel they were using to keep in touch with the tower. And by the time Jarvis had recalibrated the sensor grid to Tony’s specifications in order to clear the line, the battle had all but come to an end.

 _“The situation wasn’t as serious as it could’ve been,”_ Natasha reported. _“There were only about thirty of them. I think they were intended as the first wave to give everybody a good scare. We found the lab pretty quickly, though, and once Thor fried their power source, the rest of the squid were taken out easily enough.”_

“How many were in the lab?” Coulson pressed, fingers moving along the touch-panel quickly as he relayed the information to Fury’s team.

_“Two, maybe three hundred tops?”_

“ _Three hundred_ angry mechanical Humboldt squid?” Clint reiterated, his head in his hand, his elbow braced against the edge of the command desk. “That have the ability to fly?”

 _“Well, not anymore,”_ Peter quipped, his voice a little muffled like it always was behind his mask. _“They kinda got electrocuted, so now it’s more like a giant sushi bar. You’re lucky you’re not here, man, this place **stinks**.”_

Despite his unease at being left behind, Clint found himself smiling. “Thanks, kid. Take a few pictures for me, yeah?”

 _“No need, Jarvis filmed the whole thing,”_ Tony informed him cheerfully, sounding tinny due to the echo effect of his insulated helmet. _“I mean c’mon, flying robotic squid? I figured you’d want the home movie. I’ll bring the footage, you bring the popcorn. Maybe afterwards we can watch ‘Ghost Shark’.”_

Clint sniffed a grin, leaning back in his swivel-chair, rocking it from side to side. “Sure, Stark. It’s a date.”

 _“Agent Coulson,”_ Steve spoke, the only professional one among them (as usual), with the exception of Tasha. _“SHIELD’s crisis team seems to have clean-up under control, and property damage was fairly minimal, so I doubt we’ll need to stick around for long. The casualties have already been taken to hospital, and none of the team sustained any serious injuries.”_

“Glad to hear it, Captain.” Phil dragged a file to the centre of his screen and tapped it so that the information popped up, displaying a photograph of the suspect. “What about the scientist who manufactured the squid? Did you manage to take him into custody?”

 _“I’m afraid there wasn’t much left of Dr Krosvac by the time we arrived,”_ Steve replied grimly. _“I don’t think he’d anticipated his creations turning on him the moment he let them out of containment.”_

“Well what did he expect?” Clint asked, amused and incredulous in equal measure. “Gratitude?”

 _“Apparently,”_ Natasha confirmed, and Clint could hear her smile. _“I think it’s safe to say that the guy was a couple of beers short of a six-pack.”_

 _“I have located our missing comrade,”_ Thor piped up. _“Hulk grew tired of waiting. He also seems to dislike these marine creatures of yours.”_

 _“Yeah, well, I’m not fond of them, either,”_ Bruce spoke, his voice hoarse and his tone weary.

“You alright, Big Guy?” Clint asked.

 _“I’ll feel a whole lot better after a shower,”_ Bruce admitted. _“Can we go now?”_

There was a chorus of agreements from the rest of the team, with the exception of Tony, who took the liberty of pointing out that he was the only one who didn’t stink of fish, being safely encased in airtight armour.

 _“And it’s not coming off until we get back to the tower,_ ” he added firmly. _“So don’t even **think** about trying something, Parker.”_

_“I wasn’t doing anything!”_

Tony grunted, unconvinced. _“No, but you were thinking it.”_

 _“Guys. I’d really like to go home and shower, please,”_ Bruce reiterated, and his tone had just the _teeniest_ sliver of steel in it, enough to remind them that he’d been large and green and thoroughly pissed off only a few minutes ago. 

“Let us know your ETA once you’re airborne,” Clint spoke, before Stark could make another stupid-ass comment. “I’ll have our usual takeout order ready and waiting for you when you get home.”

 _“Awesome!”_ Peter enthused, ecstatic as ever at the prospect of food.

 _“Thanks, Hawkeye,”_ Steve said, his gratitude audible. _“We’ll be in touch soon. Avengers out.”_

Phil tapped a control on the desk to terminate the line, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he minimised some of the news feeds and began compiling a basic mission report to send to HQ.

“You know, you’re pretty good at this,” he mentioned without glancing up from his work.

“Meh.” Clint shrugged, although he felt a warm swell of pride in his chest at the words. “I guess we do make a pretty good team, Boss.”

The senior agent’s smile curled a little wider as he glanced across at him. “So it seems.”

Clint returned the smile, pleased, and felt his pulse finally slowly after hours of suppressed tension. The bracelet on his wrist didn’t stop vibrating, though. Even after the team had returned, laughing and chatting and smelling of dead marine life, the binding charm had still buzzed against his skin, a few degrees warmer than his own body temperature – not enough to bother him, but enough to be noticeable.

It was thirty-six hours before the metal cooled again.

Clint didn’t sleep a wink.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

o~O~o

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two weeks later, he awoke in the middle of the night to _fire_ and _burning_ and _pain._

It was bone-deep and agonising, wrenching the breath from his lungs in a startled gasp as he shot upright, clutching his arm against his chest with the opposite hand and swinging his legs over the side of the bed, mouth open in a silent scream as his all his muscles tensed at once.

After several long, horrible seconds, he managed to suck in enough air to speak.

 “Hng, Jarvis! Jarvis, lights, _fuck_!”

The too-bright glow of the overhead lights blinded him for a moment, and that combined with the way the room was spinning alarmingly left him disorientated, borderline hyperventilating, fighting the urge to vomit as his stomach muscles clenched.

“Clint?” Phil’s hand settled on his shoulder as he firmly tugged Clint’s burning arm away from his chest. “Clint, what is it? What’s wrong?”

The archer shook his head, his jaw clenched, back arching as another, stronger wave of pain rolled through him, driving a low, guttural scream out from behind his teeth.

His husband’s fingers were sure and steady against his skin as Phil felt along the length of the limb for any injuries – not that Clint expected him to find any. He knew what this was. He knew what this _meant._ And fuck no. No, no, no, _no._

Phil’s thumb brushed against the silver of Clint’s bracelet and he inhaled sharply, jerking his hand back. “God, it’s _freezing._ ”

Clint almost blacked out a moment later when a third wave of pain hit and his body _spasmed,_ driving a sharp, hoarse cry from his throat as he clutched his arm against his chest again, tears springing to his eyes. Dear God in heaven, it _hurt_. It felt like somebody had thrust his arm into a furnace, like the heat was peeling the skin from his bones layer by layer. His stomach rolled again at the renewed agony, and he retched, doubling over to vomit into the trashcan that Phil was suddenly thrusting in front of him, the man’s arm rubbing slowly between his shoulder blades as he coughed and heaved.

The fire was spreading now rather than dissipating, creeping further up his arm to seep into his shoulder, the joints screaming in pain at every slight movement. He shoved the trashcan away with his good arm, fumbling to grab hold of his partner, his breath stuttering out of him shallowly and rapidly. He had to make it stop. He had to make it _stop._

“ _Phil!”_ he managed, strangled and frantic, and he felt the older man move around to kneel in front of him, warm hands cupping his hot, sweaty face.

“Is it happening?” he demanded, his voice tight and anxious. “The symptoms Stephen warned you about, is that what this is?”

The archer bit back another scream, hunching forwards a little further, because he didn’t want to acknowledge it, he didn’t _want_ to take the bracelet off, he didn’t _want_ to be yanked away from his team all over again. But oh _God,_ it _hurt._

“Clint!” Phil pressed, louder now, and the archer’s breath exploded out of him in a sob as he nodded.

“Don’t,” he choked out, as his husband’s hands dropped to pull the burning limb away from Clint’s chest and turn it over, fingers reaching for the clasp on the back of the bracelet. “Phil, _don’t_.”

Coulson gripped his arm tighter when Clint tried to pull it back. “We don’t have a choice, Clint. I’m sorry.”

“No,” the archer pleaded, shaking his head, trembling like a leaf as the fire spread further along his skin, sinking deeper, cutting through his chest. He muffled another scream behind clenched teeth and sealed lips, tears cutting hot, wet streaks down his face as he arched away from Phil’s grip.

He was dying. He _knew_ he was dying, there couldn’t be this much pain unless he was dying. And the frightened, sane part of him that was struggling to keep its head above the roaring waters in his mind knew that removing the bracelet was his only chance. But he was horribly unsure about what that meant for him. About what would happen once the anchor fell away.

Phil used his weight to pin him down against the bed as Clint writhed, immobilising his arm quickly and reaching for the charm again, fingers fumbling against the frosted metal.

“It’ll be alright, Clint, I promise,” he reassured, but his voice wavered, and that was _terrifying_ to hear. “We’ll find another solution.”

“No, don’t! Phil _don’t_ , plea-”

“I love you.”

The bracelet fell away, Phil’s hands along with it, and the red-hot flames that had steadily been engulfing his body were doused immediately in the sudden rush of cold, cold, _cold_ that pierced right down to his core.

Then the world around him dissolved into darkness and swallowed him whole.  

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the belated update! Real life dealt me a few nasty blows this month, but I've made it out the other side mostly intact, so all is well. I hope you enjoyed the chapter! Sam Wilson will be joining our merry team soon, folks. :)
> 
> Yours,
> 
> S.C xxx


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